Why Chain Letters are So Bad

 

You start your email program and are bombarded with messages from strangers, internet newbies and friends alike. You may even get notifications that friends have tagged you on their blog or social network or have posted something to your Facebook wall etc.

 

Some friends you rarely hear from, so it's exciting to know they were thinking of you and decided to get in touch again, right?

 

WRONG!

 

Just as happened two months ago, and six months before that, these "friends" who supposedly were thinking of you, did not send anything they wrote. Instead, they sent or posted yet another chain letter forward that urgently tells, sappily pleads, perkily cajoles, or blackmails/guilt-trips or uses some other manipulation tactic to get you to do the most important thing in your life!...PASS IT ON!

 

Why?

 

Because the strangers who originated the chain letters are manipulative, power-tripping ego-freaks and bullies, spammers, or at best, extremely misinformed and misguided - and the internet newbies and your friends were sucked in.

 

There are a few reasons chain messages keep perpetuating.

 

1. There's never a shortage of new people on the net.

 

Because they are new to the net, they haven't learned about all the different forms chain letters take, and that these forwards are the scurge of the net, a killer of friendships and communication. So at first, they may have some excuse for passing around that canned friendship message, pseudo-religious feel-good glurge, or even that scary Nutrasweet story that looks so for real. Little do they know it and some others like it started out as spoof news on a humor site and somebody thought it would be cool to forward it around without telling everybody its origin.

 

Adding to this is the fact there are actually sites that archive chain letter jokes, hoaxes, and all manner of junk which they actively encourage their visitors to pass on, far and wide.

 

However, newbies need to be educated about chain letters in all their odious forms so they won't "pay it forward" (pass them on) and annoy people who have gotten the same fwds and others like them 20 times during the past five years. They should also have enough upstairs to figure out for themselves that Bill Gates won't send them millions of dollars abracadabra style as soon as they've hit that forward button and sent that message about him to everyone in their address book or friend list, and chain letters, no matter how  cute the picture or sweet and pleading the wording, cannot grant them wishes, good luck, love and kisses, or friendship blip just like that for sending them on to anyone! Technology is great, and amazing. But it isn't magic, and cannot literally grant wishes any more than blowing out a birthday candle can.

 

2. People know it's a chain letter but don't care, believing it's so darling, so inspirational, hilarious, cute, touching, tear-jerking, brain-teasing, etc. that they do exactly what it tells them - to pass it on to absolutely everybody or to some cheesily made up chosen number of people to fit their hierarchy of best chosen twelve or seven or eleven or whatever the number is the forward (often known as an 'fwd') specifies; or they figure their friends will simply be as wowed by the story or poem or funny picture, whatever it was as they themselves were so will overlook the lame instruction in the fwd to spam their friends, so, end up doing exactly what the chain tells them.

 

But they haven't stopped to consider the fact that not only is the chain letter full of misinformation or is completely untrue altogether, but the incredibly awesome of forwards that hit their inbox most recently has already been forwarded to countless numbers of people from countless other forwarders just like themselves, so, really isn't all that special. They completely ignore responses that debunk the forwards because somehow that just isn't as important to them as passing on junk that tells them to. A lot of people do this, and it can drive more jaded netizens to think seriously about getting off the internet altogether. Chain letters can split up friendships.

 

3. Some people afflicted with forwarditis do not remember that they had received the same chain letter forwards as last year and the year before that etc. So, they are just as in love with them as they were during the fleeting minute they were when receiving the forward months ago for the second time, and a year ago when they received it the first time. So, they pass it along again.

 

4. No one who passes on forwards ever stops to question its validity, research to see if the story is true, checks the web to see if that same cute pic has been posted to many other forums, and they have no inkling how often and how many other people may have already sent their friend that same fwd or something similar.

 

5. The thought doesn't occur to them that they are spreading around something that is not only upsetting or alarming, but also untrue, thereby, upsetting or potentially alarming others unnecessarily, or just seriously annoying and embarrassing their friends with these forwards.

 

6. Too many people who are put out with forwards, put up with them in suffering silence, afraid of losing the already tenuous communications and friendship which has already been seriously undermined by habitual forwarding of chain letters by the sender.

 

If you have received too many chain letters and get to the point where you finally lose your cool and express yourself, the forwarders either become defensive, simply abandon you as a friend, ignore and completely stop sending messages to you altogether, or all of these, in that order. Yet, they continue to pass on chain letters to other people, some of which are just as sick of it as you but too afraid to speak up for fear of hurting the forwarder's feelings and possibly getting nixed as a friend.

 

Recipients get annoyed with chain letters and forwarders for all of these reasons.

 

7. They know it's a hoax and don't like seeing their friends get manipulated into making the bad choice of passing along something that isn't true. This includes all the sappy so-called "friendship" and "blessing" chain letters as much as the urban legend chain letters.

 

8. They feel embarrassed their friends bought into it and insulted that anyone thought they'd be silly enough to believe in it as well.

 

9. They feel abandoned by "friends" who couldn't be bothered to take that extra minute and send them a personal "Hi, how's it going?", opting to send them a bogus warning, email survey, stale joke, false celebrity essay, story or quote, political or religious rant, sappy tear-jerking story or stale fluffy chain letter that's about as real and personal as a TV commercial instead.

 

10. When they discover their forward-addicted "friends" are no longer interested in staying in touch with them, but continuing to send forwards to other people and forums, they have come to the cold, hard, sad realization that chain letter forwards are more important to these "friends" than they are.

 

Receiving more than enough sickly cute, sappy sweet chain letters from friends that preach on the virtues of friendship is actually insulting to the recipient in a number of ways.

 

11. The recipiant feels they are being preached at and put down. If one gets so many forwards that tell them what friendship is and what a hug is and what a smile is and how meaningful it is to have friends, well gosh, one must be considered by the forwarders as a pretty inept person to need all these sappy sermon-like emails, and pretty stupid to believe that by spamming people's inboxes with this fake tripe one is "spreading around the love and blessings and friendship" please!

 

12. Insulted to be sent an email with some hairbrained claim they're supposed to believe, like forwarding to (spamming) 5 people will get you a peck on the cheek and passing it on to (spamming) 10 people will get you an engagement ring and how you are a better friend if you forward a chain and that if you get it back 12 times you have 12 true friends! That's absolute bull! What friend believes that? What true friend thinks one is stupid enough to believe it as well?

 

13. Infuriated their friend would send them chain letter threats for not forwarding an email, blog meme, Facebook wall post or whatever the medium. "If you don't forward this, I know you're not my friend." "If you don't pass this on, you'll never get kissed, never be hugged, never be loved, lose any friends you have now, and turn everything you touch into a block of tofu, a child will die, the god you believe in, whatever religion you keep, will be ashamed of you for denying himfor refusing or forgetting to pass this on to all your friends/x people/as many as you can!"

 

14. One is made to feel uncared for, overlooked, misunderstood, unimportant by people who are supposed to be friends because they get mostly or nothing but these forwards and no honest personally written emails from these "friends"..

 

15. The forwarder doesn't appear to practice what their favorite type of chain letter preaches.

 

So many forwards expound on how important it is to let your friends know you love them, and how vital it is to always be there for your friends.

 

Yet, when all one gets from these people are forwards like this, no personally written touching messages, it makes the individual on the receiving end wonder just how much he or she is really thought about.

 

One may also feel uncared for when all one gets from certain unthinking, even seemingly hypocritical people is forwards of any and all kinds. The recipiant starts to wonder if one's friends care so little for the recipiant that one has been reduced to that of a number among junk recipients.

 

No one wants another's recycled junk, and that's exactly what chain letter forwards are.

 

16. Whenever a chain letter arrives in an inbox or is posted on the web with an excuse for being an inconsiderate twat "I don't usually send these things on, but this one is a must read!" "I hate chain letters, but just had to send this on!" "I normally detest email forwards, Myspace bulletins or blog memes but..." "I'm sorry if this offends you but I just had to send it." "I know you'll probably get mad at me for sending this but it's important!" "I know you hate these things but I just had to share!" It's enough to make one want to scream, especially if it turns out to be a good luck wish chain, joke or hoax or anything that insults one for not forwarding it.!

 

So it goes on, people continue to pass on forwards, believing they are better and more appreciated than their own words.

 

Nothing could be further from the truth!

 

Who really knows an actual chain letter originator?

 

Sometimes they can be traced back to a specific person who started them, but many times they can't, and those who intentionally start hoaxes wish to keep it that way.

 

Hoaxters are the same types of people who make up sob stories and then call you every name in the book for deleting instead of forwarding their junk, the same types who say you're not a good Christian if you don't pass on a school prayer chain, or that you must be a racist if you don't pass on a bogus email petition.

 

They are the same sort who take a person's writing, strip the author of the credit that belongs to them, and instead, pass it off as their own or in the case of the "Slow Dance" poem, claim it was written by a dying child that in actuality, never existed let alone wrote anything.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/medical/slowdance.asp

 

Same as those who make up stories about missing or dying kids just to get people forwarding madly - only to turn out to be the child or adult her/himself who isn't really missing or sick at all, except in the head for their desperate and disgusting attempt at attention-seeking and manipulation of the masses.

 

People who start hoaxes like that are getting very sick kicks at others' expense! It's manipulative, attention-seeking behavior on a level that is so low and disgusting because people are getting jerked around just so a few amoral jerks can get their haw-haws.

 

Ignorance or lack of forethought as no excuse.

 

Playing pranks on your friends in a social network like Myspace is bad enough, but when it's in the form of a chain letter, it's not going to stay just among the friends of the hoaxter. This is because your circle of friends also has their own circles of friends, which in turn, have their own circle of friends, so, if you start a hoax about yourself as missing or dying or whatever, and your friends might think it's funny, but somebody else who is listed as one of their friends but not listed as your friend, looks at this friend's profile and bulletins, and this stranger looking at your friend's profile, sees your missing/dying hoax and assumes it's for real, and compulsively passes it along to their friends, who pass it on to theirs.

 

All of these are reasons chain letters really stink, and why starting a hoax might get the hoaxter the controll over the masses and the attention they desire, but it could also land them and those associated with them in a pile of inconvenience if not trouble.

 

Passing on chain letter hoaxes can even get innocent people in trouble for stirring up unnecessary panic and clogging up resources with junk. Case in point, the flashing headlight gang initiation hoax has fooled so many people, from the average person on the street to officials. People have become alarmed, didn't think to check it out on snopes or breakthechain to make sure it was untrue before sending faxes and emails to many people at the corporate level. One person even got arrested for passing the headlight gang chain letter on to a massive amount of people via fax!

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/lightsout.asp

 

I'm very sorry for anyone these hoaxes have hurt, from those who were taken in by them, (hopefully they'll know better than pass on chain letters from now on) to those who are friends of or related to the hoaxter and suffering fallout because of the hoax.

 

those who start snowball chains, hug-a-war chains, friendship balls, prayer wheels, (they call it a ball or a wheel in order to get people not to think of it as a chain letter) are no different. They manage to dupe internet users into thinking they are being good friends to their contacts by passing on this junk.

 

Where the missing and dying child hoaxters make you feel bad enough to pass it on, the people who start feel-good chains aren't really interested in making you feel good, they don't know you. All they care about is getting you to distribute far and wide something they started. Their emotional angle is just a bit less dirty, but every bit as fake. You may not realize this if you've been hit in the heart by one of these things and are thinking they are something so warm and so special. "Friendship" chain letters are phony. They are passed around and around, sometimes with slightly different poems, stories and sayings, and some are falsely attributed to famous people in order to sound much more profound and real than they actually are.

 

Same as those who make up a dumb personality quiz that consists of nothing but nonsense, and then claim that the Dalai Lama or Dr. Phil wrote it, and took it along with Oprah.

 

These are the same sort of people who make up lies to damage somebody's reputation and write junk and then claim some famous person said it.

 

Same type who try to convince you that your religion, gender, ethnicity whatever, is being severely threatened and that you can pull it out of the fire by spamming the net with a canned message full of malarkey disguised as news, advice, a boycott/petition, etc.

 

These are the Same sort that make any kind of judgement against you by way of debasing your character if you don't forward, or praises and promises you good things for forwarding their junk...All to get us under their control so that we blindly or with very little second thought, pass it on.

 

Some take things further still, telling you to email or even snailmail certain people or organizations, mailbombing them with the chain letter plus whatever additional comments you have been manipulated into adding to it.

 

One of many alarmist holiday related chains actually encouraged Christians to mailbomb the ACLU with Christian cards.

 

Religious and political chain letters do a lot more harm than good, especially if they are actually hoaxes. Some of them may have even been started by some anti-Christian and/or anti-right-wingers, attempting to make a laughing stock of the religious/right-wing. Others have been started by some terribly misinformed and misguided religious or political fundamentalists.

 

The backlash they unleash is not just against chain letters themselves, but against the Christians and other religious people who forward them on, and against theistic religion itself. Too many people who don't believe in God and are also bigoted against Christians, Jews or Muslims need no excuse to start in on their favorite hobby, bashing any believers and belief in God altogether. Chain forwards that exploit people by pushing religious buttons are directly responsible for much of this anti-religion hate on the net.

 

Chain letters are spam, not a legit medium for spreading any kind of information, love, friendship, warnings, news, or idiology.

 

Hoax originators don't care about dying children, 9/11, hurricanes, tsunamis or any other grave situation, racism, injustice, religion, gender rolls, our health, our reputations, our friendship, well-being, etc.

 

But they are counting on us to care, so they can use our emotions against us so we will keep the chain letters going.

 

This is true all the way from the fuzzy feel-good friendship forwards to the alarmist misinformation chains.

 

For the hoaxters, it's about power, controlling the masses by email and web postings while hiding behind the anonymity the internet affords them!

 

This is what helps them get away with insulting and guilt-tripping you with "You are heartless if you delete this and don't forward it to 10,000 people within the hour!" then laughing at those they have managed to sucker.

 

Another danger of chain letter emails is that every time you pass one on, your address and that of your friends eventually get passed on down to millions of complete strangers, including spammers. So, the more chain letters you email, the more spam you will get, and the more spam you will cause your friends to get as well.

 

All of these are very good reasons to stop sending chain letters of any and all kinds. Not to simply stop sending chain letters to specific people who have requested not to receive it, but to stop passing them on via email or web posting, completely - to everyone and anyone.