She added: “It feels nice when someone tags you.” (Ms. Hynes said some friends she didn’t tag felt left out and complained.)

For one chain, Ms. Shoket shared a quote that has kept her going under stay-at-home orders in Manhattan. “I wrote this long answer to the first person on the list,” she said. “It was about something Barbara Walters once told me about how you have no idea how interesting your life can become and the adventures in store for you.”

She hasn’t yet forwarded the challenge along to colleagues and friends, though. “I am tickled to be included and charmed by this whole thing,” she said. “But I am still deciding if my friends will be tickled and charmed.” (She’s been sitting on her email draft for more than two weeks.)

Kathryn Mockler, a writer, university professor and self-described member of Generation X who lives in Toronto, is not amused by these chains. Since March 27, she’s been getting messages that ask her to write a poem or meditation; she refuses to send them along.

“There is a manipulative tone that I don’t like,” Ms. Mockler said. “The implication is that if you don’t participate you are not who we thought you were and you are breaking everyone’s fun.”

She also resents the fact that many messages say how little time this activity will take up. “You know what is a lot less work than sending one email or not agonizing over the text?” she said. “Not doing it at all and never having received it in the first place.”