Apr 12

Apr 12 On The Viral Nature of Chain Mail

There’s a new virus making the rounds: Chain mail. Chain mail is seeing a real rise during COVID-19, especially on social media where we’ve been tagging friends and thus the chain mail memes have been making the rounds (ex. if you don’t forward this message to 5 people in the next 3 minutes, something bad will happen!!!). Do we actually believe our decisions to forward or not forward these messages give us good luck or bad luck, or is this just irrational? Why do so many of us smart, rational people fall prey to chain mail? Turns out the chain mail virus is caused by superstitions, social norms, and reciprocal behaviours.

What is the most fool-proof way of avoiding getting cursed by an ambiguous-but-equally-real-only-in-your-imagination evil spell? It’s to forward CHAIN MAIL of course!!!

My lovely and intellectual aunt sent me the following question: “Emails from friends asking us to copy and paste to ten other friends and back to the sender, implying that if you care you would do it - have you come across any research about that? The same thing happens on Facebook of course.”

It's not just COVID-19 going around these days. You may have noticed an unprecedented number of requests for you to pass long messages or fill in fun little quizzes about yourself during COVID-19. Are we all suddenly more superstitious, or more at risk of the fates looking unkindly upon us? Or is there something else at play?

What is chain mail?

The traditional understanding is that chain mail is an unsolicited communication (email, Facebook post, etc.) that contains false information for the purpose of intimidating or scaring recipients into forwarding it to other unwilling recipients, further propagating the message. Usually they promise you good luck if you forward it (e.g. “send this to 15 of your friends and something good will happen to you”), and bad luck if you don’t (e.g. “if you don’t pass this on to 10 people in the next hour you’ll die”).

Chain mail has been around since the 1800s but has taken on a new life with online communication.

The anatomy of traditional chain mail:

Actually, I have found there are a few different types of chain mail:

The Ponzi Scheme

Some chain mail is akin to a Ponzi scheme – if you send in money, you’ll get more money in return. This harkens back to the “Send-a-Dime” Chain Mail fiasco of 1935, where letters were show 6 names and addresses, and would be asked to send a dime to the first name on the list and then cross that name out, add their name to the bottom, and send out to 5 friends with the promise of making a ton more money than a dime.

The Curse

This is a message that promises to bestow bad luck or good luck to you depending on if you forward the message to the appropriate number of people or not.

The Game (NEW!)

These are in the form of fun quizzes about yourself, posting photos, filling in a form, and then you tag other people to do the same. These can also be challenges (like the ASL ice bucket challenge) asking you to make a charitable donation. (Note: not the same as Ponzi Scheme as you don’t donate money expecting to get money back).

How do I know when something is chain mail?

The first clue is that it asks for you to pass the message or image along to other people in your network. The second tell-tale sign is that if the message has some illusion of consequences if you don’t pass it along and those consequences seem improbable, it’s chain mail. No, likely you won’t die in the next 45 minutes because you didn’t forward that message (your Grandmother is probably safe too). In fact, if this was an issue, don’t you think we’d hear public service messages about “ALWAYS FORWARDS YOUR CHAIN MAIL TO SAVE YOUR GRANDMOTHER”?

How would they even know if you reposted in 35 seconds!

Why do so many of us smart, rational people fall prey to such schemes – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic?

1) Superstition

Having superstitions is a key reason why we pass along chain mail. A superstition is a behaviour that you engage in to produce a specific outcome (like wearing your lucky pair of socks so your favourite team wins), to simulate a sense of control over that outcome (because clearly those socks are not directly causing your favourite team’s win or loss). We come to adopt these superstitious behaviours through a process of reinforcement: when an action leads to a desired consequence we tend to repeat it (like that one time you didn’t wear the lucky socks and the team lost - so you always wear them now on game day). So if a chainmail threatens bad luck if you don’t forward it, and then you do forward it, and nothing bad happens… voila! We have just learned that it works. But really, the chain mail had very little to do with good luck or bad luck. So why do smart, educated, rational people who know that chain mail curses aren’t real fall prey to it?

Even though forwarding the message to 10 of your friends clearly doesn’t negate some horrible bad luck curse, forwarding it does give you a sense of control. The uncertainty hypothesis is the idea that when people are unsure about an outcome they’ll try to find a way to control it. Not having control is uncomfortable, so people make up rituals and superstitions – as unrealistic as they may be – to calm this feeling of uncomfortable uncertainty.

And a lot of people right now are feeling a lot of uncertainty because of COVID-19. Many are worrying about their health, well-being and livelihood, and that of their community. Perhaps that’s why we are seeing such a proliferation of these insidious posts on social media. That and the fact that the trade-off is very asymmetrical: forward the message (30 second time investment) to protect yourself or your grandma’s life. Do you really want to tempt fate?

What to do: Consider messages of this kind similar to an actual virus – other people don’t want to catch bad luck. Do you think your buddy Tracy will actually appreciate it if you send this post her way? Allow your perspective-taking to be widened to the others in your network to help kick back into rational thought.

And, in case your superstitions are still not assuaged, here is a list of 15 things you can do in your own home (that doesn’t involve chain mail) that will bring you good luck.

Also, never send money or include personal or vulnerable details, even if the chain mail threatens to curse you!

2) Social Norms

Although we like to think of ourselves as being in control of our thoughts and behaviours, we are highly influenced by the people around us. We generally spend much of our day in some sort of communication with others. These days, even at home, we are spending more time being connected than ever on social media, rather than face-to-face.

The principle of social proof tells us that we look to others around us to understand the “correct” behaviour. Need an example? We often see advertisements that products are the “top selling” or “most popular”, rather than any actual proof that the product itself is good. Instead, all we needed to know is that others think it’s great.

These behaviours are known as social norms, the unwritten rules of behaviour in a particular group. And they certainly play a role in why we pass along chain mail. If you see people in your network (the group you aim to belong in) passing along chain mail, you are more likely to see it as an acceptable behaviour. Not partaking might even feel like a threat to group membership.

No wonder we are seeing the propagation of chain mail on social media as we are stuck inside (rather than connecting in person – which is a much harder environment for chain mail to thrive) and spending more of our free time on our phones and computers.

Share if you agree! (just kidding)

What to do: If someone tags you in a chain mail post with a prompt that you don’t feel like doing, don’t feel obligated to do it, but repost if it offers some benefit to you, like if its a quiz if you want to do it or pass it along if you think other people will enjoy it.

3) Social Connection and Reciprocity

As social as humans are, we look to signal to others that we are part of the same group through our behaviour. We engage in certain group behaviours to signal that we are a member of that group and to forge connections. Tagging friends in chain mail posts might actually be a way to forge connection in a time where we are physically disconnected. I know certain groups have created their own chain mail (I’ve seen a few figure-skating specific ones myself!), but here are a few more examples:

a set of questions ‘to ask your spouse’ (if you are a married person - connecting and ‘relating’ to other married people)
a set of questions to ask your child (only possible if you are a parent, so reposting is a way to connect with other parents)
how many of these movies have you seen (catalyzes discussions with social groups that are attuned to movies or certain types of movies)
“choose 10 albums that influenced my taste in music, one album a day for ten days. No explanations, no reviews, just album covers.” (allows for discussions to ensue amongst people with similar music appreciation)
First photo challenge (allows for people who are in relationships to connect with other people in relationships about how long they’ve been together)
Figure skating quaran-team (for figure skaters or figure skating fans to connect on their knowledge of the Canadian National Team):

Speaking of connection, we might be more motivated to repost a chain mail thread simply because our close friend has tagged us in something and we want to reciprocate the behaviour. The norm of reciprocity is when someone does something for you, we feel obligated to return the favour. So if your friend sends you this quiz to do, you worry they might see it as rude if you don’t participate. What if they see you don’t pass it along and don’t send the next one your way?

Or worse, what if no one tags you in one of these… maybe you’ll feel left out?

Usually these are just harmless fun, but they do come with some risks, including identity theft. Many of the answers we give out in these quizzes are the answers to our ‘secret questions’ or additional security questions, and police have been warning against it.

Don’t. Send. So. Much. Personal. Information.

What to do:

Take a pause. Apparently our urge to reciprocate is strongest right after we’ve first been tagged. But do you really want everyone out there knowing these facts (even if you have strong social media security settings)? Probably not. Use your judgement.

Although we are still waiting for a vaccine to be developed for COVID-19, I have not inoculated you against the virus known as chain mail.

In summary, you are a smart, rational (most of the time) human being who is not a slave to chain mail. It’s okay to partake in innocent fun, so long as you can recognize when you are at risk of getting yourself or others tangled in a scam. I have now prepared you to look for and avoid chain mail while we continue to weather the COVID-19 pandemic from the safety of our homes and our phones.

Love,

Dr. D

A final nerd note

Although much of the viral nature of chain mail is reminiscent of Memetics, I am still undecided about how overlapped these two concepts are, as Memetics focuses on the replication of “units of culture” (ideas, artifacts, etc.) and chain mail propogates through an explicit ‘ask’ to repost, resend, as well as a consequence. In this way, the idea does not reproduce itself, but rather, a motivated other influences the behaviours of their contacts to reproduce the content for their own benefit. Further thinking must be done!