The Divine Origins of the Horny Chain Text
The day the 45th president of the United States was impeached, I was alerted to the situation by a text message full of emoji tongues.
“🚨🚨🚨HAPPY IMPEACHMENT DAY to all my freedom🗽loving hoes💦👅👅👅,” began the missive, forwarded to me without comment by my former roommate. It thanked its recipients for “putting the 🍑in IM🍑MENT” and made passing reference to “hoe biden” and “daddy ukraine,” as well as a sexual act that was deemed “the only ethical form of consumption under late capitalism.” before demanding that the note be forwarded to 10 “woke” contacts, “☭”.
It wasn’t the first text message I’d received in this style, nor the first one I had copy-pasted and forwarded on to my siblings and friends. At this point in my life, I’m well aware of the unpleasant things that can happen to a person if she doesn’t forward a chain message: She can die, or she can miss out on a chance to make a fortune, or she can disappoint her Father in heaven, or she can have a totally sexless year. These consequences have been threatened for centuries in paper letters, emails—and, recently, smutty, emoji-studded text messages, typically timed to a holiday or major event.
They are gross, they are phonetically challenging, and they are extremely compelling. On December 19, the Atlantic editor Ellen Cushing sent me the same impeachment-themed text message, followed by a plea and a question: “sorry please don’t report me to HR. where do they come from??????”
That’s the million [money-bag emoji] question [smiley face with a dollar sign on its tongue]. They come from a friend who got it from a friend who
