What motivates a person to start an email chain letter?

December 18, 2006 8:09 AM

I am curious why some email chain letters exist? Why would someone feel compelled to send out an email often expressing a sad or sympathetic event only to inform you of your impending doom if you delete it and do not forward it? Is there some profit to be made for such a thing? I recall snail chain mail where you were to put a dollar in it and pass it which made sense but I am baffled by electronic version of the chain letter. If you pass this on to 10 people you will have a Merry Christmas if not WHOA!!! Good luck!
posted by scooters.toad to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Seems like another social-networking thing. Email chain letters obviously are more likely to get forwarded than the snail-mail get-rich variety. The emails are driven in part by the good-luck/bad-luck aspect, feeding on superstitions, and in part by ongoing networking with friends.
posted by beagle at 8:17 AM on December 18, 2006

I've wondered this myself. One of my good friends is a very savvy, intelligent woman with a PhD in psychology, and yet she forwards these types of emails to me - "send this to ten people in the next ten minutes, and in 24 hours something lucky will happen to you! It really works!!!!" I don't get it.
posted by Nathanial Hörnblowér at 8:38 AM on December 18, 2006

Chain emails (all sorts, not specifically of the good luck variety) are commonly used by spam companies to harvest email addresses. A well-traveled chain letter can have hundreds or even thousands of email addresses in it's various reply-to sections.

As to why people send this particular type on, well, that's because they want something nice to happen to you and them.
posted by boaz at 8:49 AM on December 18, 2006

Let's focus on the question - not "why do people forward these letters", but the much more interesting question which scooters.toad poses: why do people write these chain letters?

Here's quite a wealth of information on chain letters in general.

I think there's going to be a diverse set of motivations - clearly ones that are asking for some material gain (which are really better thought of as MLM schemes, not chain letters) are quite distinct from those that simply ask for the letter's distribution (that is, where there is no justification for distribution other than 'luck').
posted by dmd at 8:52 AM on December 18, 2006

I've found that it's usually because the sender thinks "oh, how clever! It might might X laugh." and they send it along.

Or it makes up for their "I emailed you" quota. Instead of actually taking the time to say "Hey man, you are you?" they forward you stupid internet trash instead.
posted by drstein at 8:52 AM on December 18, 2006

The idea of chain letters being started by spam companies in order to harvest addresses had never really crossed my mind (but how will they get hold of the addresses once they're launched? just hope they'll be passed their way again!?)

I always assumed they were started by bored individuals / collectives who thought "let's see how far we can get". Possibly motivated by stupid bets. Not unsimilar to virus hoaxes.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 9:29 AM on December 18, 2006

It's perceived to be a bonding thing. Sigh.
posted by desuetude at 9:55 AM on December 18, 2006

Read Snopes on the subject.
posted by mattbucher at 10:01 AM on December 18, 2006

As to why people send this particular type on, well, that's because they want something nice to happen to you and them

...and because they're idiots. Don't forget that part.
posted by languagehat at 11:11 AM on December 18, 2006

Mental illness?
posted by chillmost at 11:52 AM on December 18, 2006

Hahahahah i love chillmost's answer.
Anyway, i dont know if you live in the UK (or have lame friends) but this also occurs in mobile phone SMS text messages. I get them from close friends and think WTF? Thats so lame, do you even know me? What makes it even sadder than emails is, you have to pay to forward texts to people. Yet they still do it.
I cant imagine why people send emails except that they think it'll make you smile if they send a 'cute' one. Its a shame, because instead of smiling, im busy puking on my monitor over how crap it is.
posted by angryjellybean at 1:19 PM on December 18, 2006

Pardon me while I get all new-age touchy-feely. I sometimes suspect that humans have an in-built need to build artificial cause-and-effect relationships. Thus the prevalence of superstition and the recent resurgence in interest in "magic."

There have been a number of studies of the neuro-mechanisms of superstition, and it basically boils down to the individual misattributing the cause of a desired effect. If you add intent from someone who genuinely believes they can affect reality in a non-Newtonian way, you have chain letters, faith healing through the TV, prayer rugs and other phenomena.
posted by lekvar at 2:38 PM on December 18, 2006

Of course, I'm talking about the motive behind the non-spam ones. Remember those? They came in the mail! On paper! I'd guess that most (if not all) of the modern ones are for harvesting email addresses.
posted by lekvar at 2:47 PM on December 18, 2006

I was going to comment further on this, but languagehat pretty much summed it up. It's the result of a disproportionately high time:brain ratio. Also boredom.
posted by Spike at 9:42 PM on December 18, 2006