#13: Let's make Y2K chain letters

mid-2000s e-girl quiz vibes

Sep 01, 2023

About a month ago, my friend wrote me a letter with a list of beautiful firsts. This slice of insight captured the beautiful ways her life had changed since we saw each other last. I loved that letter. It’s on my fridge. Somehow though, I’ve been so boggle-brained settling into this apartment - turns out moving to another country has learning curves?1 - and I’m finally replying to her letter this weekend. I’ll send mine in the envelope I made last month, so at least she gets something purty to compensate for my tardiness. And in my defense, this city is beautiful to the point of distraction:

Her letter was good for a million reasons, but maybe I love it so much because it’s a list, and I’m a sucker for a list. Do y’all remember how obsessed we were with filling out quizzes and lists in the early- to mid-2000s? I lived on online journals and the bizarre flare of bolt.com and, eventually, MySpace. We’d copy/paste these open-ended questions and bear our souls to each other with them.

The questions were almost always inane: do you change your towel every time you shower (god no, what am I, a towel baron?), do you have a crush on anyone right now (obviously, this is 9th grade, the shorter answer is who DON’T I have a crush on), who was the last person you kissed (I’m gonna be all coy and keep it a secret but everyone knows it was that one girl and that was 4 months ago and we don’t talk anymore and oh, god, does this mean I’ll never kiss again?).

For some reason, we filled these out for our whole e-world to see on LiveJournal/Xanga/MySpace2. I always felt simultaneously incapable of lying and commanded to do them. Abstaining wasn’t an option. Did y’all feel the same?

Now, the internet is so full. Like the letter itself, e-quizzes have become relics. Our attention is pulled in ten thousand directions. Who has time to read our friend’s twenty questions when there’s a video going viral about a guy who built tiny lip extenders to kiss bugs with?

So…this week, we’re bringing it back. Like a back-to-school special you didn’t know you needed, this September prompt is all about e-girl-meets-analog, baby!

Let’s make our own quiz~

I’m so excited about this idea. One of the things I miss most about the mid-2000s is how intimate the internet was. An online journal was personal. It wasn’t like your Instagram, where worth is measured in hundreds or thousands of likes. And it wasn’t like Substack, where this email plops straight into your inbox, cozying up alongside yet another ad from that company you bought undies from once 2 years ago who punishes you for life with weekly emails.

In the early 2000s, we built these tiny, close-knit e-friendships and wrote our hearts out. Back then, the smaller your circle of folks, the more exclusive your online presence was. Small was good. Getting invited to read someone’s friends-only journal? Honey, you were in the inner sanctum of cool.

I wanna bring that intimacy back into our lives. This week, we’re going to mail the quiz to a friend and encourage them to answer the questions and mail the whole thing to ANOTHER friend - and so on and so forth.

Here’s how it’s gonna shake out:

Write out two copies of identical questions. I’ve provided a version below for y’all, or you can take my ideas as inspo and make your own questionnaire. The only goal: have fun! I went for simple, early 2000s bubble-text vibes, but you do you.
Take one copy and answer it ~*honestly*~.
Leave the other blank for your friend.
Jot a quick note to your friend explaining the idea. It can be as simple as, “Hey, I’m doing this fun throwback thing. Here are my answers to this quiz. Can you make a copy, fill one out, and mail it all to another friend, too? We’re reviving the Era of the Quiz!” Say whatever you want, so long as it compels your friendo to keep this Y2K email chain questionnaire going forever until every human on earth has answered it (or the sun explodes).
Mail the blank one, the completed one, and the note to your friend, encouraging them to keep the thread going.
For an ~added bonus~, make this a Sisterhood of the Traveling Blahblahblah. Instead of your friend only sending their friend one set of answers, tell them to send their friend your answers too. They can send all the answers forward and forward and forward, until there is a tome of confessional-style answers hopping between snail mailers. Maybe, many years later, it’ll weasel its way back to you.
1. Another alternative is to make this a closed-loop chain. Get 4-8 people to agree to send this in a particular order:
  1. Sender A sends out their answers and a copy to Sender B.
  2. Sender B sends out their answers, Sender A’s answers, and a copy to Sender C.
  3. Sender C sends out their answers, Sender A and Sender B’s answers, and a copy to sender D.
  4. Sender D sends out their answers, Sender A-C’s answers, and a copy of new questions to sender A.
  5. Sender A sends out Sender B-D’s original answers, their answers to the new questions, and a copy to Sender B.
  6. And so on into oblivion.

Follow whatever template you want. Personally, I’m going to send this questionnaire to my bestie and tell them to keep sending it forward. In my opinion, this prompt works ~particularly well~ for millennials, but anyone who’s feeling the early 2000s nostalgia should hop on board.