25 and Counting

The 25 Things Incident on Facebook seems to have reached its peak and diminished again, much to the relief of many Facebook users, including me.  How exactly these things start is somewhat of a puzzle, though the chain letter concept, which 25 Things is a variation on, definitely isn’t new.

Exasperated by the number of “tags” I had received, one afternoon I mentioned the phenomena to my mom, who instantly recognized it from her childhood. Not wanting to subject herself to any unnecessary bad luck, she would recopy, using pen and paper, the chain letters she received as a kid.

Underneath the amusing ideas of perpetuation and superstition that these chain letters represent lies a deeper, and perhaps more revealing, insight into our human nature. Most of us have felt some pressure, superstitious or otherwise, to pass on the letter, and at least a little hesitation in breaking the chain. But where does this pressure come from; why do we still feel it in the face of something which is so obviously and utterly ridiculous?

Explaining the entirety of the phenomena is, of course, outside of my meager abilities, as it is undoubtedly fed by numerous factors and psychological considerations. Rather, I’ll stick with a few observations on the many characteristics of chain letters, which occur with a fair amount of frequency on the Internet.

52,000 applications exist on Facebook which serve to amuse half of the users (and annoy the other half), yet simple 25 Things outstrips them all. Something about how simple the person to person interaction of 25 Things is makes it a very appealing means of communicating between friends and acquaintances.  Qualitatively speaking, most of the information shared is fairly useless, but what it lacks in this area it easily makes up for in sheer quantity.

Unfortunately our modern mindset has been conditioned by the instant information technological world to demand a constant flow of random trivia, whether pertinent or not.  As 25 Things unites simple interaction with nearly unlimited information, it provides a means for people to endlessly entertain themselves with almost no external costs.

Reinforcing this instant entertainment desire is the human need to act as a social creature, which the artificial interaction of a 25 Things “discussion” provides.  Enter the Facebook “friend” paradox: the electronic interaction of friendship requests and subsequent activities such 25 Things create an alternate social universe to retreat to.  Despite the lack of real connections, the sharing of personal information via the chain letter establishes a form of kinship with the unknown electronic masses.

Effective as both entertainment and a form of cheap social therapy, the chain letter thrives in an environment where a few clicks passes it on.  Questioning it generates pressure to continue it, not because of superstition, but because of the herd mentality that defines the rapid growth of electronic media. Unconscious interaction becomes the norm, with each subsequent post generating a very high rate of return due to the low cost nature of electronic communication.

At some point I have to get over my exasperation at being constantly poked to participate and wonder at the sheer genius of the system.  Lasting interaction it is not, but as an example of what the combination of millions of people and modern technology produces, it is absolutely fascinating.  Something about its “perfect storm” of interaction prompts respect, even from those of us who never intend to respond to a tag from a friend.

25 Things deserves recognition, and even homage in the form of a blog post specially constructed to pay tribute to the phenomena and its number.  50 years ago chain letters passed from kid to kid in schools, now they encompass millions of adults across every continent, which is absolutely amazing.