The iPhone has applications for almost everything, from helping people to choose the best wine for a meal to locating supermarkets in Holland. Now there is one to help them to stay chaste until marriage.
For just 59p, consumers can download an application that allows them to take a purity pledge and then display a silver ring on their phone to prove their commitment to abstinence.
[….]The application may also allow school pupils to circumvent uniform rules banning jewellery. In 2007, Lydia Playfoot lost her high court battle to wear her purity ring at school when a judge ruled she had not been discriminated against.
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Tom65
That’s only slightly less creepy than Purity Balls.
Indylib
Stupid people will pay for stupid things.
edit It’s funny that the new ad for the silver engraved rings just showed up.
PeakVT
How about an app that shows kids how to use a condom? ‘Cause that’s what they really need.
Dennis-SGMM
Those iPhones must really be something if you can operate one with your head up your ass.
Johnny B. Guud
Ah yes. The decline of Western civilization continues unabated…
Crashman06
I wish I was smart enough to come up with a scam like this.
geg6
I saw this earlier today. I honestly thought it was a joke. And then I read the article.
These people really are sad. The math and chess clubs in my high school got laid more than these people.
Zifnab
@PeakVT: Or one that fits snug over your taint.
:-p Someone is making a killing on this app, and I regret that it is not me.
Walker
Band is the meeting point for social-misfit sex. And no, American Pie did not start this — they merely observed something that bandies have known forever.
SpotWeld
..everyone has a band camp story..
this is actually true.
General Winfield Stuck
Dubious contracts
Victorian Morals
Stupid Rules
Phony Pledges
Mindless Consumerism
Frivolous Lawsuits
Horny Christians
-Another tricky day in Winger Paradise
chopper
@Tom65:
i’ve got purity balls all right.
and ‘lydia playfoot’? what is she, a hobbit?
Bubblegum Tate
[Lone Starr and Vespa are about to kiss when Dot Matrix sounds an alarm.]
Dot Matrix: We’ll have none of that mister! [to Vespa]: How far did he get? What’d he touch, what’d he touch?
Vespa: Nothing happened!
Lone Starr: [annoyed] What the hell was that?
Dot Matrix: That was my Virgin Alarm. It’s programmed to go off before you do.
Punchy
We’re supposed to believe someone with this moniker is chaste?
Nice try. Cant wait for Kraven Head and Anita Bootie to attempt these same shenanigans.
jake 4 that 1
Fxd.
gex
@jake 4 that 1: I believe the new term for all the virginity preserving anal sex is “Saddlebacking” as coined by Savage.
PaulW
And to think, for 39 years I’ve been enduring my chastity the hard way…
The Moar You Know
@Walker: If only the rest of the students had known. Everybody was getting laid in band.
mcc
It’s called “Parallel Kingdom”.
…Come to think of it, most video games serve this function.
Rommie
You know, if the Great Gazoo-gle is smart enough to detect post titles and swap new ads in, what would the little green guy put in for some of Balloon Juice’s more, um, famous topics?
jerry 101
Man, I wish I thought of that.
The fastest way to make a small fortune has got to be coming up with scams to sell “christians.”
Have some crap that no one wants to buy? Slap a biblical verse or some jeebus on it.
It’ll sell like hotcakes.
Sure, the market is limited, relatively speaking, there aren’t a lot of people to buy christian crap.
So, you won’t make a huge amount of money, just a small fortune.
JGabriel
You know what proves a commitment to abstinence? Not fucking.
A silver ring on your phone just proves that some people will pay for anything.
.
The Grand Panjandrum
It must be a way to keep all those lonely people away from farm animals and the neighbors pets:
No joke.
David Hunt
I know lots of people are making fun of this, but last I heard, Holland had once of the highest teen virginity rates in the world. I suspect that it has something to do with them being open and informative when talking to their kids about sex and its consequences, made birth control easily available, etc. I’ll grant that it’s anecdotal but it doesn’t go very well with the arguments that such things promote promiscuity.
When last I heard anything, it was also one of the easiest places on Earth to get an abortion, but it had a very low abortion rate. See previous paragraph about info/birth control/promiscuity.
gex
@David Hunt: And therein lies the rub. Conservative ideologues don’t care about actual results, just that the ideology is upheld. You see it in our national security, our economy, and in teen pregnancies. Their every solution makes things worse, but only a terrorist loving liberal would want to try some other approach.
JGabriel
Rommie:
Twenty-one months later, Balloon Juice is still the top Google response to the query: Skull-fucking Kittens.
It’s really kind of amazing when you think about it.
.
Xenos
@jerry 101:
Ever heard of Amway? They made billions on evangelicals.
I am in awe. That must have won the internet for the year.
As for the phenomenon described, I first heard about virginity-maintaining anal sex when living for a while in a very pious Muslim community. It was an open secret that young people would fool around this way and still qualify for proper religious and social marriages.
jake 4 that 1
@David Hunt: Yes but if kids actually stop screwing (so much) and very few women have abortions, 3/5ths of the planks in the GOP platform would go up in smoke.
SMBC Explains
Purity Rings Explained
John Cole
Most people don’t take their phone on the Appalachian trail with them, so I’m not sure what the point of this is.
Calouste
@David Hunt:
I think it is not as much the highest teen virginity rates as the lowest teen pregnancy rates. As in about 1/8th of the rate in the US.
SiubhanDuinne
@Punchy: Maybe you missed the name of the writer of the original article: Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
I swear I am not making this up.
DBrown
You think this application is strange? These wingnuts also have a father and daughter marry at the chastity ball … then the girl puts on the ring. Then the daughter will be fateful to the father … I’m not making this up. These are sick loons.
Catsy
There is so much win in this.
Others have noted the marketing genius in whoever thought of this, but I submit that the author actually missed a golden opportunity for selling “Purity Ringtones”.
Catsy
Oh for the love of–I swear, raw text would be an improvement over the embarrassing piece of crap this site uses for a text editor and spam filter.
David Hunt
@Calouste: My information is kind of old, but it was reported as both a high teen virginity rate and low teen pregnancy rate. The source was Dr. Dean Edell (sp?). Take that for what it’s worth.
Chuck Butcher
I’d prefer a cell phone that makes phone calls and that’s it, but the phone camera is proving useful for a motorcycle. I have over-the-saddle saddle bags for actual travel but they stay in the motel room and the good digital camera with them since there just isn’t anyplace to put a bulky camera.
skippy
i found a much better and more practical iphone app concerning what’s between your legs…
geg6
Walker: Dude, I was a member of the chess club. I can’t speak for math club (though there was quite a bit of cross membership) but all us DFHs were in chess club. That’s where all the good smoke was to be had. The jocks all made fun of us loser nerds and DFHs, but our parties were the best of anybody’s in school and the jocks would suck up to us for days to try to wrangle an invite (which was rarely forthcoming). And we’d have laughed any of these abstinence freaks outta the place. Ah, good times.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
I’ve been married for fifteen years. In year 10, after the second kid my wife and I unintentionally started practicing abstinence. So far so good.
jlo
Will this thing help me stop having virtual sex?
SGEW
You people have no idea what the stoners, punks, and freaks were up to behind the gym, do you?
geg6
SGEW: That was where we used to have many of our chess club meetings. Well, if you stretched the meaning of meeting to include getting really, really stoned and making out like crazy while still making awesome chess moves, that is.
Aaron
Yes, and that bikini you got in second life will allow you circumvent the dress code!
\lol
SGEW
@geg6: I think that your definition of “High School Chess Club” is very, very different than what it was generally understood to be in my alma mater.
ice9
Dang. I thought the phone picked up your horny vibes or something, and would ring a special “purity ring” tone to remind you to stop it, just stop it right now. Turn your back on Satan! And bend over a little bit!
That’s an app the evangelicals would be proud of. I think NSA’s got the technology.
ice
geg6
SGEW: Well, it was the early/mid 70s and we DFHs considered ourselves “intellectuals.”. LOL! Hell, it was just an excuse to look smart while we smoked ourselves into a stupor and had hot high school sexual experimentation. The nerds loved us because our cool rubbed off on them and they fancied themselves as sort of young Michael Savages to our Alan Ginsburgs.
WereBear
Freakin’ A.
I got the iPod Touch instead of the iPhone not only because of the cost factor, but because when I’m happily playing with the coolest gadget on the planet, the last thing I want is a phone call.
Plus, a friend with the iPhone reports the battery doesn’t last as long… though it is very cool with the camera and the voice recorder thing.
General Winfield Stuck
@geg6:
I thought of myself more as a cosmic philosopher. Or, Space Cadet, if you will/
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“In year 10, after the second kid my wife and I unintentionally started practicing abstinence. So far so good.”
I remember reading an article where Johnny Depp after he became a father describing craving sleep like a class-A drug.
Toddlers and preschoolers are very effective contraceptives.
steve s
Daddy Daughter Dating is about the most twisted thing I’ve ever seen. If when my daughter’s a teenager she wants to date me, I will personally put her up on Match.com in a slutty dress.
RedKitten
There were quite a few shenanigans during debate team trips, too. I don’t know if this was the usual state of affairs, or if I was just a really bad influence.
DBrown
@steve s: Good idea and point.
drillfork
@jerry 101:
Your comment reminded of this. Thanks…
http://www.noob.us/humor/south-park-faith-plus-one/