Natalie Monaghan
As children we received chain mail in the letter form, but technology developed and as teenagers we received chain mail through our ridiculously named Hotmail accounts and Nokia bricks. At first chain mail was exciting. You were intrigued and believed that you would meet the love of your life in the future if you forwarded the message to ten friends. Even when you were getting slightly older and had developed enough sense to recognise the ridiculous nature of chain mail, you still considered sending the message in order to prevent any doubt about receiving a horrible punishment. So ultimately, after cursing the sender of the mail, it is most likely that we will all have had to do something we did not wish to do, in order to prevent a punishment or receive a reward. So could we now argue that the nomination craze over Facebook be responsible for a similar pressure?
If you do not complete a nomination you receive, you could be seen as boring and receive comments that are upsetting. If you choose to do the nomination, you are instead rewarded with recognition and ‘likes’. Some nominations are rather unpleasant, and would not be something you would do normally. In many senses, the consequences of completing them far outweigh anything that chain mail achieved. There is a peer pressure attached to the nomination craze too, because you are viewed through your social media pages and are more likely to complete the task for fear people will judge you if you ‘chicken out’. That said, there are certainly more positives that have come from publicly receiving nominations. If we did not receive an ‘ice bucket challenge’ would we have donated to charity? It seems that nominations are again a craze that could create disruption if they are not monitored, but equally they have more potential to deliver something much more meaningful. This has been proven in recent crazes and the increased publicity for certain charities.
