Chain Letters

Like most people, every once in a while I receive a chain letter by email - of the kind that promises cash from Bill Gates, or free cellphones and laptops from Nokia and Ericsson, if I would only forward the email to my friends. I diligently reply with a polite mail explaining why the email was likely to be a hoax, using information from Snopes.com, a remarkable site that is like an encyclopedia for urban legends of various kinds. I rarely get a response, but it is usually enough to dissuade the sender from including me in his/her mailing list the next time around.

Chain letters have been around for a while. The Egyptian 'Book of the Dead' was a sort of chain letter that promised resurrection to those entombed with a copy. In the Middle Ages, Europe had its 'Himmelsbrief', or 'Letters from Heaven', allegedly written by God, or one of the saints, that protected those who propagated it, and punished those who disbelieved.

With email, the costs of propagating chain mail have dropped to zero. I am not even sure whether most of the people in a chain are believers; I have never known people asking others in the chain whether they got the money or the laptop that was promised. Nor have I heard of people in my circle responding with angry emails to chain mail, since most of these tend to be sent to friends. Its easy to imagine why, with zero costs, and a possibility, however remote, of a win, it probably still makes sense to some people to participate.

There are, however, some technical problems that can come between that money and you. As Leo Notenboom of Ask-Leo.com explains, it is next to impossible to effectively track email. No one can tell, including Bill Gates, how many people an email was forwarded to. Of course, this is no obstacle if it's the gods who are keeping count; 'Letters from Heaven' are still popular. I received this email with a Latin flavour a couple of weeks back. I think the accompanying picture is of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a popular object of veneration in South America.

The President of Argentina received this picture and called it "junk mail." Eight days later, his son died.
A man received this picture and immediately sent out copies. His surprise was winning the lottery.
Alberto Martinez received this picture, gave it to his secretary to make copies but they forgot to distribute it. She lost her job and he lost his family.
This picture is miraculous and sacred, don't forget to forward this within 13 days to at least 20 people.
Do Not Forget to forward and you will receive a huge surprise!!

The mail is brief, it does not claim divine authorship (unlike the 'Letters from Heaven' of the Middle Ages), it has a deadline (13 days), a minimum quota ('at least 20 people'), a testimonial ('the President, the 'man', and Alberto Martinez), and a list of all the people who participated in the chain mail, all of which make it a good example of a 20th century chain, according to this exhaustive article on the evolution of chain letters.

However, the mail did carry a somewhat apologetic subject line:

' See Carefully............dont believe in it .but try to play safe :)'

Does this presage the end of such mails? According to this entry in Wikipedia, chain letters are a kind of meme, the cultural equivalent of the gene, and are likely to mutate, evolve, and survive. The Ericsson laptop (I have never seen one in my life) will likely be replaced by an Apple Macbook Air, and Bill Gates, whose wealth for long nourished modern chain mails, by Warren Buffet.

Curiously enough, I have not received any mails promising largesse from an Indian billionaire: "Mukesh Ambani wants to give you a year's supply of groceries", or "Kushal Pal Singh promises a free apartment in Gurgaon". Even to the most gullible of Indians, these may just be too hard to believe.

Calvin gets a Chain Letter...