The first chain letters, in VanArsdale’s analysis, were what folklorists sometimes call “heavenly letters,” or, more commonly, Himmelsbrief, a German term.
“I just thought that it would be interesting to try to figure out what was going on and how worked,” he told me, of a research project that has taken almost half a century and much of his life.
#A letter chain archive#
VanArsdale, whose archive is a treasure trove of what he calls “amoral chaos” and contains more than 900 letters, dating back to the late 1880s.
The most complete accounting of the history of chain letters was written by an 82-year-old self-described independent researcher from California named Daniel W. If it is nearly impossible to say where chain texts come from individually, it is much less difficult to say where they came from generally. Once again, I used Reddit’s chat feature to ask a stranger about the origins of a message, and once again, the person confessed, “I’m so sorry, I got it from a friend.” Then it was reposted to Twitter, then to Tumblr.
When I asked him for the origins of the text, he admitted, “I was sent it by some other gay guy lol,” then did not respond to several emails begging him to help me find the source.Īs it turned out, the text was originally posted in September of 2019 (very proactive!) to the subreddit r/copypasta, which archives all kinds of copypasta: chunks of text that are meant to be copy-pasted and spread across the web. I learned this the hard way, after messaging a Reddit user who goes by “Anthologay,” who shared the impeachment-day text in a forum. You can find them on Tumblr and Reddit and Twitter, but the person posting them is rarely the person writing them. They come from a friend who got it from a friend who got it from a friend, which is to say they come from no one. Where do they come from? That’s the million question. On December 19, the Atlantic editor Ellen Cushing sent me the same impeachment-themed text message, followed by a plea and a question: “sorry please don’t report me to HR. They are gross, they are phonetically challenging, and they are extremely compelling. These consequences have been threatened for centuries in paper letters, emails-and, recently, smutty, emoji-studded text messages, typically timed to a holiday or major event. At this point in my life, I’m well aware of the unpleasant things that can happen to a person if she doesn’t forward a chain message: She can die, or she can miss out on a chance to make a fortune, or she can disappoint her Father in heaven, or she can have a totally sexless year. It wasn’t the first text message I’d received in this style, nor the first one I had copy-pasted and forwarded on to my siblings and friends. It thanked its recipients for “putting the 🍑in IM🍑MENT” and made passing reference to “hoe biden” and “daddy ukraine,” as well as a sexual act that was deemed “the only ethical form of consumption under late capitalism.” before demanding that the note be forwarded to 10 “woke” contacts, “☭”. “🚨🚨🚨HAPPY IMPEACHMENT DAY to all my freedom🗽loving hoes💦👅👅👅,” began the missive, forwarded to me without comment by my former roommate.
#A letter chain full#
The day the 45th president of the United States was impeached, I was alerted to the situation by a text message full of emoji tongues.
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