I also have an irrational negative reaction to this new thing everyone is doing in emails where they say "I'm moving Jim to BCC to save his inbox." I was telling my BF about it, and he was like, "that's so clever, I might start doing that now!" and I was rankled even more. I actually understand and agree, and see the efficiency of it, but somehow there's just something very...I can't find the right word, but sycophantic or showy or something about it, the way it is phrased vs. the efficiency of the technique. I think I'm going overboard with it, but I still shudder at it the way a lot of people shudder at the word "moist."
I don't understand how this works or what this means. Please would you explain? (I do know what BCC is.)
BCC is the same as blind copy. It's an option, in addition to the cc field, on an email. And sorry if this is going into even too much detail, but it lets you send a copy of a message to someone (in the bcc field) without anyone in the To or cc field knowing. One of the important things to note when using the bcc field is that if any of the people in the To or cc field reply to your email (where you bcc'd someone else), the person you bcc'd will not be included (which makes total sense).
So sometimes there are a ton of people on an email, and it's going back and forth, continuing to copy everybody and their mother, when really only like two or three of the people need to be continuing to be connected to the conversation. So, mostly as a courtesy to those that don't need to be on the email but keep getting pinged and having to spend time seeing if they need to pay attention to it, someone says, "I'm going to move Jim (and everybody else and their mothers) to BCC to save his inbox." This lets Jim know what's happening without suddenly cutting him out (which could be a good idea in certain situations) as well as everyone else, and is a courtesy for Jim since he won't get anymore emails on this topic that is irrelevant to him (because when anyone else replies again, he won't be included since he was blind copied on the last one).
Both my work and volunteer lives are like this - with anywhere between 5 and 30 people on an email and a chain gets specific enough that most don't need to be on it anymore. I mean, it makes a ton of sense to do it, actually. It's just that somehow the phrasing of it feels gross to me. Something about the "to save his inbox" that I am having an allergic reaction to. And I swear I get this multiple times per day now, starting only like a month ago. It became a THING so fast and everyone's using it as much as possible!