Comment by noduerme

Empathy farming is what people with a religious or moral framework would call wicked. The reason the writer here observed that most of the suckers writing sympathy notes appear to be religious is not that religious people are stupid, it's that religious people are the last to completely abandon the notion that other people are real and need their support. They are the last to realize when a false messiah or a fake 105 year old woman baking fake cakes needs their help. It hijacks their moral framework, because they have invested a lifetime in believing certain tropes and terms and what (I as an atheist) would call sappy horseshit, which nonetheless imbues meaning into all aspects of their daily life. They don't suspect that the attack on their dignity will come disguised as an appeal to their faith.