e-mail bankruptcy n. The state of being unable or unwilling to read and respond to all the e-mail messages one has received, and so to delete those message and start over again. Also: email bankruptcy.
Example Citation: Last month, venture capitalist Fred Wilson drew a lot of attention on the Internet when he declared a 21st century kind of bankruptcy. In a posting on his blog about technology, Wilson announced he was giving up on responding to all the e-mail piled up in his inbox.“I am so far behind on e-mail that I am declaring bankruptcy,” he wrote. “If you’ve sent me an e-mail (and you aren’t my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.” …
The term “e-mail bankruptcy” may have been coined as early as 1999 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who studies the relationship between people and technology.
Professor Sherry Turkle said she came up with the concept after researching e-mail and discovering that some people harbor fantasies about escaping their e-mail burden.
—Mike Musgrove, “E-Mail Reply to All: ‘Leave Me Alone’,” The Washington Post, May 25, 2007
