Why Chain Letters Are So Bad

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Why Chain Letters are So Bad

You start your email program, go to your favourite web communities and social networks. There, you 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 of these are normally very sensible people, and some friends are people you rarely hear from, so it's exciting to know they were thinking of you and decided to get in touch again, right?

Think again!

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, other than a little excuse and maybe a sigline at the top of the email or post.

Instead of an actual letter, they sent or posted yet another chain forward that urgently tells, sappily pleads, perkily cajoles, or blackmails/guilt-trips or uses some other manipulation, or any combination of the above, tactic to get you to do the most important thing in your life!...PASS IT ON!

Why? What possible harm could that non-threatening, fun-promising chain letter do?

More than a lot of people think.

The problem is that your friends and their friends further up the chain, some of which may not even realize it is a chain letter, were duped by something started by complete strangers.

Many people think chain letters are only the "Pass it on and good luck will come to you. Don't pass it on and you'll get cursed." variety. But chain letters use every emotional angle imaginable, and come in a vast array of subjects. Some don't even tell you in a direct way to pass them on.

Signs It Is A Chain Letter gives tips on how to spot one, but basically, if it's viral, it is a chain letter.'

People who start chain letters:

A. At best, didn't have that as their intention, but it got away on them.

B. Are unaware that chain letter campaigns are not a good way to get things done and may continue circulating long after a goal is reached or a campaign has stopped. In addition, once they've joined the viral realm, they need to be checked out as true by discerning individuals who refuse to simply pass along something without thinking. For every viral that contains something completely true and inspirational, there are dozens more that are absolutely phony.

C. Are spoof writers and prankers who didn't intend for their work to take on a life of its own as a full-blown chain letter.

D. At worst, and very often the case, chain letters come from hoaxters and extremely misguided people.

Hoaxters, particularly those who make up sick kid messages and phony people to pray for, and phony prayers, are manipulative, power-tripping ego-freaks and bullies, spammers that love to get a huge laugh at the emotional expense of others.

Internet newbies and your friends alike, get duped every time they fall for and pass along a hoax message.

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 people who:

- Make up dumb personality tests that consist of nothing but nonsense, and then claim the Dalai Lama or Dr. Phil wrote it, and took it along with Oprah.

- cite and appear to have a link to a hoax-busting site included in them - especially Snopes. This is a trick to make the chain letter appear valid so the reader will just forward without question, because after all, if the forward has a Snopes link, then it must absolutely be true! Right?

Wrong!

The link the chain contains could turn out to be a debunk of the very forward that included it, or worse, it could be a masked link that looks like Snopes but if you click on it, it could turn out to be a malware/Phishing site.

- Make up sob stories and then call you every name in the book for deleting instead of forwarding their nonsense.

- 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, strip David L Weatherford of credit as it's real author, and claim it was written by a dying