An SMS or a message received through one of the many instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp Today so popular promises you luck and prosperity to a condition: that you forward it to a certain number of contacts. What if you don’t do it? Years and years of misfortune. It is often in such messages that consist of the so -called “Saint Anthony chains”a phenomenon that has its roots in the past centuries and which, with the advent of digital, rewards no longer to the dear old card, but to the new communication systems that we all use daily. The chains have always leveraged emotional and symbolic elements: from faith in divine protection, to the fear of bad luck, up to the desire to participate in a sort of collective movement that makes us feel part of a community. Today they have turned into real tools that can feed the spam, the theft of illegal pyramidal data and systems. Understanding their functioning means understanding how viral communication exploits human weaknesses, yesterday as today, and learning to defend themselves without falling into easy alarmisms.
In this deepening we will reconstruct the Origins of the phenomenonwhich as you understand was born well before the internet, and then analyzed how the chains found new life in social and instant messaging systems. Finally, we will show you What dangers are hiding behind messages apparently harmless e which strategies to adopt to protect you and your loved ones.
The ancient origins of the Sant’Antonio chains
Well before the advent of smartphones and social networks, the first chains circulate in the form of “Letters from heaven”. They were written texts with care, real calligraphic works, which were said to come directly from God, Jesus Christ or, in any case, by some divine entity. Those who received her was convinced that guarding them brought spiritual protection. In their evolution, between XIX And 20th centurythese letters turned into shorter and easier messages to replicate: it no longer counted the physical object itself and the care with which it had been produced: it was the content to be spread quickly to be at the center of these messages. And here was born the characteristic element of what we call today Sant’Antonio chains: the need to copy and send them to several people to guarantee the benefit promised in the message or avoid the divine punishment provided for dissidents.
In Italy the first documented testimonies of this type of messages date back to January 9, 1849when the Gazzetta del Popolo he published an article of complaint against one chain asking to write to nine people. The spread of such messages took place in a historical context marked by the wars of independence, and there were no lack of political interpretations: some saw them as propaganda or destabilization tools. During the First World War they even circulated versions that attributed to the future emperor Francesco Ferdinando the fate of having interrupted a chain, as if it were the trigger of the conflict.
Over time, the chains “secularized”: no more prayers, but “good luck” chainswhich resumed the symbolic number nine and leveraged popular superstition. It is only In the 1920s that the name of Sant’Antonio began to be associated Stably to this kind of messages, probably because a particularly well -known text invoked it, to become the common term to indicate the entire type of writings.
The chains of Sant’Antonio at the time of digital
If in the past the chains required a certain commitment – to copy nine letters by hand or to type them required not a little time and money – with the introduction of the photocopier before and with Internet Then the mechanism with which to disseminate these messages changed by contributing to their proliferation. In particular, with the increasingly widespread diffusion of e-mail In the 90s, the chains received new lifeblood and began to spread in an important way. Despite it spam of e -mail messages both in clear contrast with the most basic rules of the Netiquette (the online etiquette), the chains of Sant’Antonio “digital” have continued to prolilefare, even taking on new forms.
Today, thanks to SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram and other instant messaging platforms, these chains present themselves as requests for help for sick children, appeals to humanitarian causes, unfounded alarms on non -existent (or even existing) emergencies, or as promises of rapid enrichment. Often they manipulate emotions to push users to forward themand their diffusion is favored by the tendency to share without verifying the sources. In many cases, they become spam tools: spammer use chains to collect thousands of e-mail addresses to resell. Other times they are the disguised face of real pyramidal systemsin which the sending of money to the top of the chain is requested, promising easy earnings to those who participate. These practices are illegal in Italyas established by Law 173 of 2005 and reiterated by the Court of Cassation in 2012.
But digital has also opened a new space: the chains of Sant’Antonio understood as Symbolic activism tools. Today it can happen to receive invitations to turn off devices for a few minutes, as a form of collective protest against environmental wars or policies or to perform other similar actions. The philosopher Maura Gancitanoin an interview with the agency HANDLEwith regard to this particular phenomenon, explained:
Let’s say that it has been a few years old we have witnessed a growing diffusion of digital symbolic manifestations, collective gestures that try to transform participation into a shared, accessible and visible action. These are short rituals, replicable and easily widespread that sometimes replace traditional forms of protest or associations, and this happens for various reasons, including the fact that they give way to participate even in those who cannot take to the streets, to those who live in the province and in small towns, but so it can feel part of a community that does not remain indifferent. In some cases they manage to build media attention and to mobilize people who would otherwise remain on the margins.
How to defend and break the chains of Sant’Antonio
Although they lost part of the intimidating force that characterized them in past centuries, the chains of Sant’Antonio continue to represent a risk. The threat of bad luck or death is always without foundation, but the real damage that these messages can cause is concrete and is inherent in their deceptive content. There dissemination of false information carried forward by some chains of Sant’Antonio, he risks fueling in a massive way the increasingly widespread disinformation, fertilized in an important way also thanks to an improper use of generative artificial intelligence tools. In addition to the propagation of fake news, these messages can also become an important vehicle for attempts at scam based on social engineeringthat is, the art of manipulating people by inducing them to reveal confidential information.
For defend yourself from the chains of Sant’Antonio It is sufficient to apply two fundamental principles:
- Analyze the message received: Never take for gold poured what is written in an e-mail or in a WhatsApp message, even if it comes from one of our contacts.
- Think before submitting: If you are not sure of the truthfulness of a certain information, ignoring the message is always the best choice. On the other hand, the oxygen that allows the chains of Sant’Antonio to survive is precisely the sharing fueled by users who are both victims and executioners of similar messages.
