Just days after the tragedy, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo had desperate words for people who were content to remain inactive on gun control reform. In May, a teenager shot and killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School near Houston, Texas. Some politicians' condolences in the aftermath of the Florida high school shooting were criticized because the senders have a history of financial support from pro-gun organizations like the NRA. All have staunch pro-gun stances and financial ties to the NRA. Politicians like Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and even President Donald Trump were taken to task for their “thoughts and prayers” messages after the Parkland shooting. In fact, in the years following Sandy Hook, more states loosened gun buying restrictions than tightened them. There has been no major gun-control legislation in the nearly six years since Sandy Hook, the tragedy that was supposed to change everything. And to #ThoughtsAndPrayers critics, the repetition of mass shootings exists because no one is doing much else besides offering thoughts and prayers. The repetition of “thoughts and prayers” is a product of the repetition of mass shootings. Jokes, mere hours after a deadly shooting? To the voices behind the dark humor, the persistence of “thoughts and prayers” is the real joke. “The first truckload of your thoughts and prayers has just arrived.” In one highly-shared image that circulated after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting in February, “Thoughts and Prayers” is imprinted on the side of a garbage truck. It’s not a good kind of trending: Among the earnest pleas for social and legislative action, the aftermath of each successive shooting inspires more and more memes and cynical jokes. “Thoughts and prayers” has reached that full semantic satiation.įor the last few years, after every mass shooting, the term immediately trends on social platforms. But it also becomes something ridiculous, a jumble of letters that feels alien on the tongue and reads like gibberish on paper. Semantic satiation is the phenomenon in which a word or phrase is repeated so often it loses its meaning.
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