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Break the Chain
Karen Stollznow - B@D
LANGUAGE
Have you ever
‘broken the chain’?
I have, and it made me deeply unpopular back in
kindergarten. This was pre-Internet, when chain letters were even more annoying.
In those dark ages, they were received and sent by snail mail.
I received a tantalising, personalised letter, curiously, with no return address.
The long letter was handwritten. It was mysterious and exciting, explaining
that the message had been sent to thousands of people, all around the globe.
They were trying to ‘break the record’ for the world’s
longest-running chain letter. My task was to duplicate the lengthy letter,
by hand, and post the letter to an additional ten people. Fulfilling this
task would result in good fortune and the perpetuation of the chain. Then came the threat. To that date, no one had ever
“broken the chain”. To do so would incur grievous yet
non-specific bad luck for all eternity, and beyond.
Sadly, the chain letter ‘died’ with me, by
way of an emergent skepticism, fuelled by an intrinsic laziness at the
prospect of such an administrative effort. Since this time, I have been
plagued with bad luck (although I don’t attribute this to the
breaking of the chain).
Earlier versions of the handwritten chain letter would
play on your guilt and sense of community; what kind of monster would ignore
everyone’s effort and excitement by ending a chain than had been
running for years and was going to be entered into the Guinness Book of
World Records? If guilt didn’t work, the fear and threat of curses,
hexes and misfortune would. Then you would enlist your own victims and
repeat the cycle. Chain letters were like a paranormal pyramid scheme.
The chain letter ‘industry’ has boomed in
the Internet age. Receiving a chain letter was once an infrequent event. Now,
it can be a weekly, if not daily affair. Rather than painstakingly
reproducing copy after copy by hand, the sender simply hits forward. The letter sent to
thousands is replaced by the email sent to millions. The chain letter isn’t
sent from some puzzling anonymous source, it’s sent from colleagues,
acquaintances, friends, family and that dickhead who somehow got your email
address.
The net has also changed the face of the chain letter. No
longer a game, they masquerade as jokes, stories, religious parables, urban
legends and warnings, hoaxes about viruses, special offers and advertisements.
However, they all have a few features in common. They will instruct you to
spread the chain letter contagion (“Send this email to at least ten
friends”). They will promise something good in return and provide
anecdotal evidence (“Enid
did, and now her herpes is in remission”). Often, they will threaten
bad luck if you fail to do the email’s bidding (“Cyril
didn’t, and he suffered another rectal prolapse”).
It isn’t difficult to understand the psychology of
the chain letter ‘sender’. For a few, they simply want to pass on the
witty joke, cute photographs or touching tale. Others truly hope to gain
the ‘good fortune’, or at least hedge their bets. What have
they got to lose but all of their friends? They would rather run the risk
of pissing you off, than risk losing good luck, or gaining bad luck. For some,
chain letters are a superstitious ball and chain. Their guilt at annoying
you is overridden by their belief, fear and credulity.
There are people who are genuinely scared by the
prospect of ending a chain and inviting bad luck. For them, the written
word seems to hold magical truths. In this way, chain letters are similar
to prayers; the belief that invocation can return a desired result (or
prevent an undesired one). This reminds me of those creepy St Jude adverts
in the public notices columns of newspapers; recite this prayer and pray to
St Jude for a solution to a problem, when your prayer is answered,
re-publish this notice. How many times did the prayer ‘fail’?
How many times was a positive result attributed to St Jude? How many times
was the notice just printed by some religious nut? This practice is now
electronic and you can post your problem to the St. Jude Novena site.
Chain letters are harassing, time consuming and foolish.
Some find them insulting, as they can suggest that the recipient believes
in curses. Others find them offensive, as they are based in threat. They
can cause real problems, advertising your email address and rendering it
vulnerable to spammers, or that dickhead. Chain letters are, in fact,
spam-like themselves, and many people construe them as impersonal junk
mail. They are a violation of Netiquette. Then there’s the money
chain letter, the ‘get rich quick’ pyramid schemes that not
only waste your time, but your money too. Chain letters that solicit money
are illegal in the United States, and the US Postal Service regards this as a form of gambling.
The original chain letters had a more pragmatic purpose.
Snopes
explains that the concept goes back to the middle ages, when people would
write out remedies and prayers, passing them on to friends and family. Clearly,
some modern senders have similarly good intentions, to warn or inform us.
However, the reality is that chain letters are a source of misinformation.
The written word does not hold any magical power. Words
may (hopefully) make you think, they can change the state of relationships,
politics and society, but saying something doesn’t necessarily make
it so. The next time you receive a chain letter, become the weakest link
and break the chain!
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#$%@!
and Welcome to Bad Language
I'm Karen Stollznow
...(Cunning) Linguist,
Author, Skeptic and Investigator of the
paranormal and
pseudo-scientific.
The Psychic Skeptic…
Ghost Mining: Investigating a Haunted Hotel…
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