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It’s no secret that scammers love plying their trade on social media, and Facebook is far and away their favorite venue.
Facebook scams and hoaxes come and go, but some of the most insidious ones keep popping up on a recurring basis. One of the worst hoaxes of them all has been making the rounds for well over a decade, and unfortunately it’s back yet again.
This hoax claims that a young 22 month old boy shot himself in the chest with a brad nail gun and he is struggling to survive. The hoaxster asks the reader to pray for the child and “copy and paste” the info on their Timeline.
The actual text of this particular hoax varies a bit from time to time, but this is the version that is going around right now:
“PRAYERS NEEDED: Urgent prayer request! The Scott’s (From Antioch Baptist Church) 22-month-old son accidentally shot himself in the chest with a brad nailer (construction nail gun). It went off in his heart ~ He is now in critical condition and not doing well, and neither is his mom ~ Please start a prayer chain for this baby. Please copy & re-post. As you would want someone to do it for you, thanks, guys. I wanna see this as your status for at least half hr, please!!!! A good friend just posted, asking all prayer warriors to start their own chain by copy-and-posting, and I don’t ask often, but this is just a baby.
This is a copy & paste.“
While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with praying, it’s important to resist the urge to copy and paste this hoax onto your own Timeline because that just incentivizes the scammer to keep creating new hoaxes.
Let me say again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with praying for someone. If you (or one of your friends) knows first-hand of someone that’s in need of prayer, by all means share that info on your Timeline. The same goes for someone you see mentioned in a reputable news source that needs prayer.
However, if you see a request for prayer for a stranger that asks you to copy and paste it into a post of your own, you can rest assured that it’s a hoax.
I really hate these hoax prayer requests because they tug at the heart strings of innocent readers while also making it easy to miss legitimate prayer requests due to all the digital noise created by the hoaxes. I wish the scammers would get a job and leave innocent folks alone, but that’s highly unlikely to happen in today’s world.