If you want to be saved then type AMEN
Back when I was a kid I used to get a few of those chain letters.
You know the things – you'd get a card from your cousin [in my case it was nearly always a cousin for some reason] with a list of names and addresses. You had to add your name and address to the list, send a card to the sender and then copy the card and send it to ten friends. The theory was that you would eventually get dozens of cards through the post.
I think I tried it a couple of times and then lost interest.
But then they started getting threatening. If I broke the chain then all sorts of evils would befall me. My house would burn down, my sister would be sold into slavery and I would die a long, painful and lingering death. I carried on ignoring them and strangely none of the evils happened [though I suppose there is still time?]
Now of course this idiocy has transferred to Farcebook and Twitter. If you love Jesus then type AMEN and share with all your friends: the implication being that if you don't share then you're a Godless Heathen [which I am, but that’s beside the point]. A variation on the theme is that if you pass on the message then some child or other will be saved from some horrible disease. I wasn't aware that hospitals worked on the number of "likes" or "retweets" but there you are – I live and learn.
Sometimes though someone takes the piss, or I assume they're taking the piss unless they are total morons, when they post a picture of some apparently unfortunate victim of some tragedy. They ask for AMENs to somehow cure this "victim" and wait for the AMENs to pour in. And pour in they do.
The best I have seen yet was on Twitter –
There was something slightly iffy about that so I took a look. Rather than search for firemen rescuing kids, I did a simple image search.
So all those Twits are in fact imploring Jesus or whoever to save a character from a film? Do you laugh at them or feel sorry for them? It's hard to know.
Twitter was down this morning for an hour or so.
I can't help but wonder how many chronically sick people died as a result?
Amen for Photoshop!
And amen for CGI!
The firefighter could start a new career in horror movies. He'd be great for the make-up department.
Looks like Aaron Eckhart, who two years previous to this was starring in a Tobacco Control propaganda piece called "Thank You for Smoking", playing a cynical tobacco lobbyist who believes every TC lie (including SHS) under the sun. Instead of that convenient fiction, a really scary horror movie could draw its inspiration from our nightmarish real world, where Tobacco Big Wheels cannot but be fully aware of their product's near-innocuous nature, even as they witness the endlessly developing insanity. And what an eye-opener it would prove to most people!
Wasn't there a story with Tinkerbell, or whatever her name was, who said that every time someone said that they didn't believe in fairies, one of them died and that people had to clap their hands to ensure Tinkerbell lost no more of her friends?
I assume a lack of "amens" will have a similarly devastating impact
One story I have managed to avoid all my life is Peter Pan. Never read the book and have never seen a film. I don't know why.
So not typing AMEN kills an angel? An interesting concept. There again they could stock up again every Sunday, unless the rule only applies to Twitter or Farcebook.
"chronically sick people died as a result?" Do such people still exist? Since the health folks only seem to concentrate on made-up "problems" and epidemics, I have wrongly assumed real illnesses had all been cured. Amen.
There is one disease that is reaching pandemic proportions, and that's Gullibility. Unfortunately there appears to be no cure for that.