Secret Sister is a

chain letter A chain letter is a message that attempts to convince the recipient to make a number of copies and pass them on to a certain number of recipients. The "chain" is an exponentially growing pyramid (a tree graph) that cannot be sustained indefinit ...

-type

gift exchange A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there ...

pyramid scheme A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly im ...

that has been primarily spread through

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

. It was first noticed in late 2015, and returned in the Christmas season each year after that. In a typical post, participants are given a list of six names and are asked to send one gift (or book, or

bottle of wine "Bottle of Wine" is a song written and recorded by Tom Paxton, which was also a hit for the band The Fireballs, whose version reached #9 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in 1968 and #5 in Canada. It also reached #3 in South Africa. The song, which in ...

) valued at about $10-15

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

to the person at the top of the list. They are then asked to remove the person in the top spot, move the person in the number two spot to the top, add themselves to the number two spot, and invite six friends. If those six friends all send gifts to the person at the top of the list and recruit six additional people, the original participant will receive a total of 36 gifts. Unlike a typical

Secret Santa Secret Santa is a Western Christmas tradition in which members of a group or community are randomly assigned a person to whom they give a gift. The identity of the gift giver is to remain a secret and should not be revealed. Deriving from the ...

exchange, where participants only give and receive one gift, Secret Sister participants are unlikely to receive the promised gifts. This is because an exponentially growing pyramid of gift givers and recipients cannot be sustained indefinitely. As it gets harder to recruit new participants, the scheme will fall apart. According to

Snopes.com ''Snopes'' , formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source f ...

, while a handful of people claim to have received a single gift when participating in a Secret Sister exchange, there is no evidence that anyone has received a substantial number of gifts via this scheme.

References

{{Scams and confidence tricks Confidence tricks

See also

References