Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

Yep, I'm talking about the one that can guarantee a thread derailment. Is it worthy of having an entry now, or should we just wait?

If you are talking about the pic specifically, no.
If you mean the whole "you'll get x if you reply but if you don't reply then (insert something bad)" thing in general, yes. Good luck on finding the origin of that kind of phrase tho. There is a spectrum of variations of it and it probably existed since the creation of forums.

OK, after a quick scan of the intermowebs for this, I didn't find much. Does anybody have any info on just what this is supposed to be?

They're called chain emails. The scourge of 90s internet. "Forward this to X people and all your dreams will come true/don't and everyone you love will die in 12 hours" etc etc. It didn't start as a forum thing.

Chain mail (no not the armor) was actually a thing long before the internet was even a concept so I guess it could qualify as a meme but not necessarily an internet one.

The evolution of chain email → forum spam could be documented, they definitely soared in popularity after the internet became a thing and they're considerably more memey in content now.

I could see a more broad article on chain emails/comments and their origin and use, but one specifically about this exact one seems a bit too narrow.

"Your mother will die in her sleep if you don't reply to this post" has become a big 4chan meme used to derail threads, as it guarantees everyone will just post stupid replies instead of talking about the topic.

Since desustorage is down i cannot bring any examples but its used a lot on /co/, /mu/, /v/ and /tv/, and not even variations , just this one phrase.

I'd agree that we should definitely have an entry for chain mail, especially since it seemed to spread much more with the birth of the internet.

wait, there hasn't already been an entry for chain mail?

There probably has been.

There's a ton of this on 4chan, especially on YLYL threads

Geez, you'll find tons on any website with a comments or forum system.

why do people keep missing the point of it?

“Your mother will die in her sleep if you don’t reply to this post” has become a big 4chan meme used to derail threads, as it guarantees everyone will just post stupid replies instead of talking about the topic.

Do people actually believe this?

here's your reply op, cant risk it