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The Thoughts and Prayers App: Letting People Know You “Care”

In light of all the thoughts and prayers recently sent into the ether world over the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, I thought it would be “cool” to share an app I found that will help people share their “I really care” posts on social media. My thoughts and prayers are with you as you use this app. 🙂

Video Link

11 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Geoff

    It’s not often I’m really shocked by the stuff you post here Bruce, but this truly hit rock bottom. My wife heard me playing it and assumed it was some kind of send up. I really don’t think so. I’ve googled and it actually appears serious.

    First, there’s the way it encourages kids by saying it’s an app that will draw attention to them with minimum effort. That’s at least one of the Ten Commandments gone! Why use tragedy to draw attention?

    Then there’s the part where they didn’t get to hear about a tragedy in Turkey, then find it’s most of the world. Why? Because those countries aren’t important, they aren’t civilised.

    Lastly, the whole tone of the advert is at odds with tragedy. If this were screened after the Vegas shooting I’d have wanted to punch the self righteous kids on the screen, and do a lot more than that to those who produced it. ‘Wow, it’s so exciting, there’s a plane been flown into a building in New York. Now I can spend all day grinning into my app’. This is the pits.

    I still can’t help but feel it’s not actually serious.

    • Bruce Gerencser

      I think it is a serious spoof. I checked for the app on iOS and there is no such program. My takeaway was that saying “thoughts and prayers” has no intrinsic value — an utter waste of time.

      As an Evangelical, it was common, upon hearing someone’s story of woe, to say I’ll pray for you. Of course, rarely did any praying take place. Saying it was a shallow, insincere expression of concern and piety.

      I thought the video also did a good job of exposing how self-centered, self-indulgent we’ve become as Americans. Turkey? Not our concern. One joke floating around about Trump’s initial non-response to the crisis in Puerto Rico is that he looked at a map of the United States and couldn’t find Puerto Rico. Not on the map, not our problem.

  2. Avatar
    Becky Wiren

    Very sharp satire! I probably won’t even post it to my liberal group on Facebook, as I do have some sincere Christian friends (pastors also!) I wouldn’t want to hurt. But those Christian friends are the type who would pray and then ACT.

    But very funny. Because we have to laugh. This kind of humor is common to humanity, to help us at least cope.

  3. Avatar
    Trenton

    Thoughts and prayers are about as useful as using a coconut shell to bail water out of the titanic. That being said there are people out there who get it and do take action. On the other hand for our legislators to be bought off by the nra and not be able to add universal background checks mandatory waiting periods and other common sense measures that might help save lives is utterly despicable. The fact that it is harder to get an abortion than a gun shows the true values of the supposedly pro life crowd (though the two are not mutually exclusive)

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