August 5, 2026
Inbox drama: error message chaos
Stop sending me your errors
Email users are raging after fake “error” messages hide the real message
TLDR: The writer is mad that some emails show a fake “plain text not available” notice instead of the actual message, making life harder for people who prefer simpler email. Commenters were split between cheering him on as a defender of usability and roasting him as hopelessly old-school.
A simmering internet annoyance just got its main-character moment. In "Stop Sending Me Your Errors", Tomasz Kramkowski goes off on a very specific but wildly relatable sin: emails that claim “Plain text version not available” even though the real message is sitting right there in the fancier version. His point is simple for non-email nerds: if someone chooses the basic version on purpose, don’t punish them with a fake dead end. Show the message, not a shrug.
And the comments? Absolute catnip. One camp rallied behind the author like he’s defending the last scraps of a sane internet. People complained about phones showing these bogus fallback messages in notifications, turning inboxes into nonsense before you even open the email. One reader said they’ve gone so far as to rewire their mail setup just to dodge this exact problem. Another widened the battlefield beyond email, saying the web does the same thing when sites break unless you allow every script under the sun.
But not everyone was sympathetic. The spiciest dunk called the author “the digital Amish driving a horse down a paved road,” basically accusing him of refusing modern life and then complaining about traffic. That kicked off the classic online drama: is this principled resistance to bad design, or just nostalgia cosplay? Meanwhile, the funniest summary came from a commenter who compared the whole mess to getting a delivery labeled “all good” with “Error” stuffed inside. Brutal, petty, and honestly hard to top.
Key Points
- •The article says `multipart/alternative` is defined to carry interchangeable representations of the same message, not an error in one part and real content in another.
- •The author received an email whose `text/plain` body said “Plain text version not available,” while the HTML part contained the real message.
- •The article outlines three scenarios—very old clients, MIME-capable clients without HTML support, and clients configured to prefer plain text—to show why the placeholder message is unhelpful.
- •The author argues that if a sender cannot generate a useful plain-text version, adding a misleading `text/plain` part can make the user experience worse.
- •The article disputes the idea that ordering the HTML part last justifies sender preference, noting recipients may intentionally prefer plain text for cleaner rendering.