BCC Everyone:

Please take a moment to sign this important pledge promising you’re not mad at me. Thank you for your time.

BCC Everyone:

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for the great turnout yesterday. It really meant a lot to get to see! But the fight continues. Please take a moment to sign this pledge promising that you’re not mad at me today.

BCC Everyone:

Me again — it’s so inspiring to see how many of you have signed both pledges. Thank you! Hopefully you can carry that energy into today’s pledge, which is also about promising that you’re not mad at me, and the supplementary pledge that today’s pledge hasn’t made you mad at me for the first time even though you weren’t mad at me yesterday. Also, some of you have not yet signed either pledge. That’s fine, we do understand that time is at a premium for everyone these days, but we do ask that you sign all three (plus today’s supplemental Pledge B) at your earliest convenience.

BCC Everyone:

One of you raised a great point yesterday, asking whether it might be possible to send out a sort of rolling pledge that incorporates all past and future assurances that you’re not mad at me, whereby each signatory could put down their name in a sort of “once and for all” fashion, which would save us all a lot of time and energy in the long run, not to mention reduce the likelihood that sending out daily pledge reminders might not in fact make a great deal many more people mad at me than would have gotten mad otherwise.

It’s a great idea! But I’m afraid it just doesn’t scale. It’s got to be an assurance a day. I promise you, if I could bring the number of pledges down any further, I would — it’s a lot of work for me too. So please do sign today’s pledge as usual. Or, as always, you can spontaneously text or call just to say, “Hey, I’m leading my ordinary life today not being mad at you,” which is just as good. But if you do call, you should also text, because sometimes I forgot who’s called and who hasn’t. Thanks in advance.

BCC Everyone:

I’m trying to respond to everyone in a timely fashion, so please bear with me; obviously there’s a lot to get through. In the meantime, please sign as usual.

BCC Everyone:

[Out of office reply] Please just take a moment to sign this important pledge promising you’re not mad at me. Thank you for your time.

BCC Everyone:

Here’s the thing: It’s 30 seconds out of your day, but it saves me from having to tailor a unique response to 372 emails with various suggestions, and most importantly, allows me to get on with my day knowing that none of you have suddenly become mad at me. That’s a lot less time than however long it would take me to cultivate the emotional resilience and sense of reciprocity to get on with my day without constant reassurances from everyone I’ve ever met, including people I am myself mad at, or whose opinions I generally hold in contempt, that they are not mad at me.

BCC Everyone:

It’s not supposed to be reciprocal. Just sign the pledge!! I’m allowed to get mad at some of you sometimes because I know how to contextualize it in the broader sweep of our relationship, but if you get mad at me, I don’t know how big your mad is, or whether it overshadows the fact that — and I’m sorry to bring this up, but it looks like I kind of have to — I’ve been through a lot, even by the standards of the last year and a half. Are my Publicly-Available Trauma Bucks still good here, or did I already redeem the last of them? I should have budgeted, I realize, but I kept forgetting to look up the exchange rate.

BCC Everyone:

No one is allowed to be mad of me because it’s like the rainforest, you know, where all the different layers of the rainforest and all the different creatures are totally interdependent, so the death of one tree is the death of all, or something, and in order for the rainforest of me to thrive I need assurances from every single one of you that you are not mad at me. Just say it! Why won’t you just say it? And if it’s that easy, why can’t you just say it every day?

BCC Everyone:

I don’t care if you hate me, I just need you to sign it. We don’t ever have to speak again; I don’t give a shit about you and you can fuck off to wherever afterwards, but you’re going to sign this goddamn pledge before you part forever. Is that what resilience feels like?

The Chatner

BCC Everyone: Please Take A Moment To Sign…