I’ve always hated chain letters– from the time when they were on paper to now, when they live on in email. I don’t know about you, but I NEVER EVER forward them so I can reap the rewards promised at the end of the message. Who has the time? Who wants to annoy their friends with useless email that clogs up their inboxes? I can faithfully report that nothing bad has ever happened to me because I haven’t forwarded a chain email. I seriously doubt anyone keeps track of who has or has not sent a chain letter back to them.
Now there’s a study by Cornell University about chain letters. They found out that information spreads in straight lines through narrow social networks, rather than fanning out widely throughout society. This is true of both the Internet and in daily life. Computer science professors at Cornell and Carleton College studied two Internet chain letters and discovered that messages echoed through overlapping circles of friends. That explains why I’ve gotten the same chain email letter from different people who know me, but not necessarily each other (yet another reason not to forward them).
It’s good to know that even though chain letters are annoying, they’re reaching a more limited audience than I previously thought. If I continue to delete them rather than forward them, I can not only break the chain, but also the straight line in which they were travelling.
