Apple drops “Baby Shaker”
by Kelli
On Wednesday, Apple yanked an iPhone application called “Baby Shaker,” which encouraged users to silence a virtual screaming infant by shaking their phones.
With applications typically targeted toward young, male iPhone users – future fathers – the implications are disturbing and dangerous.
According to the NY Daily News…
The 99-cent application, created by a company called Sikalosoft, went on sale in the App Store on Monday and quickly outraged child welfare groups, who demanded an apology from Apple CEO Steve Jobs….
Baby Shaker features a sketch of a cute baby that quickly dissolves into tears and cries on the iPhone screen.
Users then violently shake their phone[s] until the child stops crying – and red X’s morbidly appear over the baby’s eyes.
A description of the application ends with the words, “Never, never shake a baby…” [b]ut it also sinisterly challenges users: “See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!”
The company has yet to respond to requests for an apology.
[HT: Proofreader Laura Loo; Image courtesy of YouTube]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Every now and then an item like this will surface and leave one nearly speechless. This post reminds us that we are indeed engaged in a battle with the culture of death. The war is being waged, among other places, in corporate boardrooms, in schools, and even in churches. What WERE they thinking? How could they be so crass?
I’m disgusted. How anyone could invent something like this and then have the audacity to say, “Never shake a baby”???
It’s like, “Never shake a baby. But pretending to shake a baby is 99 cents worth of fun!”
SICK. SICK. SICK.
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. But I am.
Nasty. and sicko.
Just what we want our future fathers to learn.
It’s like some twisted inverse of those dolls you take care of in HomeEc.
Instead of nurturing the doll and trying to lovingly calm it, you shake it.
What is wrong with people?
I agree. Gross, and really inappropriate.
That’s really sad. From what I understand, Apple doesn’t have much to do with the Aps that get put up, but I’m glad they took action and pulled this one. It’s inappropriate.
Wow. That is just sick.
Wow. How terrible! What kind of mind thinks these things up??
As Mark Shea is wont to say, “Show me a culture that despises virginity and I’ll show you a culture that despises children.”
And as C.S. Lewis pointed out, “Chastity is the least popular of the Christian virtues.”
God is holy. Holiness and purity are related. The proven physical, emotional, and social benefits aside, chastity, e.g. sexual purity, is a reflection of God’s holiness and is particularly under assault by the kingdom of darkness.
Satanists carry this out literally; virgin sacrifices, in their mind, score them more “brownie points” with Satan; the younger child sacrifices are, the purer the victim, so the greater the “rewards” (in their minds; Hell is actually a place of punishment, not a place of rewards, and it was designed for punishment of Satan and his fallen angelic comrades, not for human souls, and is actually a place of torment for either.). This is why abortion is not just a “right” or a “reproductive freedom/health procedure” to these folks, it is a sacrament; and aborted children are considered sacrifices to Satan for these reasons.
Yes, I know that some rabid proabort will post rants denying, decrying, and ridiculing these statements; they have before whenever similar observations have been posted. But it is what it is nonetheless.
As to the hatred of children, especially, well…that is our loss. As our nation has permitted the slaughter of over 50 million of them, and embraced the birth control mentality that creates a society more hostile than welcoming to them, we have lost more than 50 million spiritual role models. It was Christ Who, according to scripture, never held his disciples up to children for emulation; instead, He put a child in the midst of the disciples and instructed them to become like that child.
The baby shaker is so typical of bullying tyrants/cowards; find a target that is vulnerable and can’t fight back, then find some fault(s) with the victim to justify your violence/hatred/atrocity towards him/her/them.
Kudos to Apple for yanking this further expression of anti-child bigotry and propaganda.
Things like this app terrify me for the simple reason that for some people at least, shaking seems to be a reflexive response to a baby that won’t stop crying.
Nobody shakes a baby with the intent to injure or kill, and I don’t understand WHY it happens that people start shaking them to get them to stop crying. Is it to get their attention?
I was babysiting my nephew when he was a baby 20 years ago. He started crying. Nothing wrong – that is, his diaper had just been changed, he had just eaten. He was out of control screaming. I picked him up and walked him, talking quietly, and shusshing. That didn’t help, so I found myself shaking him gently.
I caught myself and thought “WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING???” I quickly put the baby to bed and left the room, my heart pounding. I didn’t consciously think of shaking him, and I don’t know where that came from.
You’d better believe that from then on, I paid close attention to what I was doing when I babysat him and his younger brother (who was a MUCH bigger cryer than the first one).
It’s bad enough that people get caught up in emotion and frustration and start shaking them, now there is an app in the wild that reinforces that behaviour!
What God loves is in the most danger in this world – the more He loves them, the greater the danger. What else could it be but a Satanic attack. It’s a Satanic attack against us and against God.
I haven’t found anything that gives an idea of how many times this thing has been downloaded, because you’d better believe that between the time it was first publicized and the time it was removed, there were TONS of downloads. I wonder if Apple has the means to delete the app when the phones are sync’d. I sure hope so.
You can’t injure a baby with gentle shaking, Mrs. Spooky. They often respond well to it, in fact, just like other forms of bouncing, rocking, or walking them. Your instincts were likely good.
The kind of shaking that would harm a baby is extremely unlikely to happen accidentally, unless perhaps the baby is dropped, or someone is playing with him much more roughly than is appropriate for his age.
(But I am totally in agreement that this “app” is really awful.)