In a move that has rocked the political world, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Friday that the federal budget will no longer include foreign aid initiatives. Instead, the Conservative Party’s “Economic Action Plan” will launch a new social media campaign to lend intangible support through Facebook “likes”, shares, and comments.
The campaign, dubbed “Click-Aid”, was reportedly inspired by ongoing Facebook trends. Facebook users should be familiar with the concept of “1 Like = 1 Prayer”, which has successfully integrated social media and modern medicine to help burn victims, cancer patients, and disaster survivors.
Using this seemingly arbitrary conversion of social media attention to spiritual support, Facebook has been able to focus hundreds of thousands of prayers on those who need them most. Soon, Facebook users will be able to like and share official government updates to make a difference in people’s lives.
“If one like can be said to be equal to one prayer, when there are so many obvious differences between a simple click and a heartfelt call for divine intervention, then in theory we should be able to convert these resources into funding for international aid,” says Minister of Finance Joe Oliver. “When you ‘like’ this kind of content, the prayers don’t come from anywhere specific – they just appear out of thin air. We hope to harness this transformation to generate virtual dollars, and get struggling regions the help they need.”
“We were impressed by the innovation of the Facebook team in pioneering social meta-currencies,” said Prime Minister Harper in a statement to the press. “My cabinet also drew inspiration from Kickstarters and communications companies, who frequently donate to charities based on the number of texts and phone calls made by their clients.”
A press release written by the Prime Minister’s office stated, “this campaign represents significant savings to the Canadian public, since we basically run the whole campaign with an unpaid intern and some Twitter and Facebook accounts. Added benefits include that Canadians will get all of their depressing international news on their Facebook newsfeeds, which they can easily ignore, and they will no longer feel the need to donate to pushy charity workers. News programmes will even have more time to cover important issues like sports and what a Nikki Minaj is.”
Over the upcoming few weeks, Harper will be meeting with financial advisors to discuss the conversion rates of virtual prayers from different faiths, as well as the looming threat of popular Facebook pages creating divine inflation.
