Prayer Hands Emoji

A comic title for a tragic situation that goes as a symptom of modern day lives and the massive use of social media, "Prayer Hands Emoji" presents a lonely guy (Lucas Lind) who wakes up one morning to see his Twitter find flooded with tweets related to a mass shooting in Glendale. He pour his heart out in compassion for the tragedy, puts the hashtag to get noticed by the crowd of tweeps, but no one cares, no one likes, and no one shares his tweet. The next step in his crave for attention is too use the hashtag along with a text joke. And he succeeds. But with every positive reply it also comes the ones bashing him for using of a tragedy to become a funny man.

The short doesn't seek to give some dark twists or prolong the dude's story, it's all about revealing the inner part of a majority of social media users who thrive for attention, or simply want to be heard, and when the intelligent, heartfelt and positive things to be shared are ignored one feels compelled to act out with sarcasm, irony or simply make fun of serious things - a double edged sword that can attract folks with similar obnoxious, controversial views, and others who'll act with a fury, caps lock activated mode and yell through their keyboards.

This was done before the outgrowing cancel culture, so the leading man escapes from irreparable harm. Had it been an expanded story it'd be interesting to know about his other social relations outside of the internet, friends, co-workers, family and neighbours, just to see how much of his life could be ruined just for sharing a "funny" message to the world. Here's a work of simple ideas and presentation which resonates a little deeper about the blessings of internet/social media and also its perils and problems. World hasn't got much better since 2019 when it comes to internet exchanges. 7/10.