Me and my friends stumbled upon the topic of chain letters while hanging out. Now when I say chain letters I mean the letters which has a story and a condition attached to it (like “you have to pass this to all your friends or you will have bad luck for eternity”). Some of us believe in it, some of us don’t. But really, the chain letter fad (if it ever was a fad) is now fading. Why so?
Is it because chain letters are proven to be useless or fake? Or is it because of the fact that people are just not into those kinds of stuff anymore.
Let us trace my experience with these chain letters. I experienced receiving these kinds of letters (hand written ones) when I was still in elementary. Even if I don’t really believe in them, there was this urge to distribute it again just for the “chain” purpose. My classmates would talk about it before, during and even after class. It really created buzz. In high school, emailed chain letters started to pop up. These were the ones that you have to pass to most, if not all, your contacts. There were also chain text messages that flood your inbox. When Friendster started to became an interest of all students the chain letters shifted gear and went for another medium. People using Friendster would still receive messages or bulletins that are chain letters.
Chain letters —> Chain text messages—>Chain emails—>what next?
Same content, same purpose, different medium of distribution.
Its amazing how fast things change. Even something like this uses the new social media. 
People surely know where and how to reach people. Now most people are more exposed to networking sites such as facebook and twitter. The closest to the chain letter I see in facebook are the quizzes and some applications that predicts the future and gives advices. Maybe it was meant to be an alternative to the chain letters or maybe not. But still the essence of it seems to be just like it.
New social media is not only a faster way of communicating but also providing a new avenue for the things that were traditionally done before. It surely gave new meaning to things like chain letters.
