|
?:reviewBody
|
-
In late October 2015, social media users began sending and receiving solicitations to participate in a secret sisters gift exchange scheme. Posts on Facebook, Reddit, and several forums described a process that involved sending one present (commonly valued at $10) and receiving 36 in return. Participants who opted in to the secret sister exchange were instructed to send a gift to the first sister on the list, move the second on the list to the first spot, and put their own name into the second spot. Many of the postings warned naysayers and skeptics that their objections would be deleted from comment threads: The majority of secret sister gift exchange solicitations that arrived in our inbox definitively promised 36 randomly selected $10 gifts for each sister, a number that seemed to hinge on static participation levels for every individual group exchange. As a telling number of social media commenters pointed out, the idea was simply a repackaging of age-old chain letter gifting schemes, the pitfalls of which are both well-known and about as ubiquitous as the practice itself. It's worth noting that amid the myriad enticements for such initiatives on social media, many users expressed interest and committed to the exchanges. But while a handful of individuals claimed to have received a single gift, none reported an avalanche of $10 trinkets arriving at their doors. Had such a plan ever borne fruit, accounts of such success mysteriously remained virtually non-existent. However, the plausibility of actually garnering returns was secondary to a far bigger problem with the secret sister scheme. According to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, gift chains aren't just mathematically impossible; they're also illegal: A common objection raised by prospective participants addressed the motivations for participating in the exchange; those users held that whether the scheme worked or not, the initial $10 outlay seemed a minor risk (which served to altruistically served to bring joy to others). However, that interpretation neglected to consider those solicited (by any single user's participation) stood to lose out, thereby rendering individual intent (to give or receive) largely irrelevant. In short, the problem wasn't whether any one person expected to receive presents back -- it was the inherently unfulfillable promise that a $10 buy in would result in hundreds of dollars worth of returns for others. Whether or not user participated honestly, they had no hand in ensuring that those who bought in under them would receive any return on their initial investments, and the risk in question was problematic precisely because it was undertaken on behalf of others. In December 2016, the Secret Sister trend revisited social media as a wine exchange (with the same problematic status): Participating in secret sister gift exchanges is a prospect dubious for many reasons (primarily legal ones). Reddit's popular Secret Santa gift exchange presents an option for those who wish to exchange holiday presents with strangers, but it involves sending and receiving a single gift (not 36).
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}