Monday, February 1, 2010

What is a chain letter?

However preposterous their claims, chain letters always attempt to play on the irrational wishes or fears of their recipients — and often succeed.
Answer: Simply defined, a chain letter is a written text which advocates its own reproduction. "Please copy this message and send it to 10 other people," urges one common specimen. "Forward this to everyone you know," begs another.

The Good Luck of Flanders letter is a classic example from the 1930s. It promised prosperity to all who copied it and sent it on to four other people within 24 hours, and bad luck to those who "broke the chain" by failing to comply. Virtually all chain letters hold out some sort of reward for reproducing them, be it blessings, good luck, money or simply a clear conscience. On the flip side, there may be threats of calamity for failing to circulate the requisite number of copies, e.g., "One person did not pass this letter along and died a week later."

However preposterous their claims, chain letters always attempt to play on the irrational wishes or fears of their recipients — and often succeed. For those especially vulnerable to psychological manipulation, they seem to exude an aura of mystical or quasi-mystical power.

So, why do they do it ?

Most often Chain mails are started by novice hackers with an aim to bottleneck the internet's email systems. Their true purpose is to provoke fear, and more importantly to spread fear, rather than to inform. Often the texts are mere pranks or hoaxes. People who forward them without validating their content may be credited with naive good intentions, but it's impossible to attribute anything but cynical or self-serving motives to their original — and almost always anonymous — authors.


More Info :

Examples: Variations on traditional forms

Examples: Email chain letters