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Cartoon character profile pictures on facebook

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by milquetoast, Dec 6, 2010.

  1. milquetoast

    milquetoast Senior Member

    TL;DR version
    1. Cartoon profile pictures on facebook were fun
    2. I wonder when did it start being about child abuse?
    3. Common sense takes a back seat to pedophile rumours
    4. People are funny when they boost their ego by trying not to conform

    When I first noticed it spreading, it had nothing to do with raising awareness, it was just for fun:
    Then it turned into raising awareness for child abuse and really started taking off. Now some idiots started a rumour about it being started by pedophiles trying to identify kids on facebook and people are buying into it even though it doesn't make a lot of sense. As Snopes put it, common sense takes a backseat to alarmism. The media also doesn't help by publishing these rumours with misleading statements (cough.. dailymail.co.uk).

    Worse than the rumours were the detractors that accused people of being sheep and following a fad. What does changing your profile picture do? It raises awareness, I'm sure most people would agree to that. It's one thing to prompt others to donate money or volunteer, but to claim that awareness is useless is just ignorant. Throwing money at problems and volunteering aren't the only ways to support causes. There was even a guy that took a screenshot of a $50 donation he made while claiming that changing profile pictures are useless. Funny thing is that he doesn't realize he probably wouldn't have donated if people weren't changing their pictures ;). Fortunately, most people see past this type of ego-boosting and just ignore it.
     
  2. ema

    ema Full Member

    Yeah I'm kind of confused.
    I don't understand how it promotes stuff..
     
  3. milquetoast

    milquetoast Senior Member

    Every person that wonders why there are cartoon characters up will look it up and find out why. Even if it gets somebody thinking briefly about child abuse, it brings about awareness. Let's face it, most people have too much going on to think about child abuse problems all the time so the facebook thing sort of serves as a reminder. With the media attention and buzz among online social networks, I'm sure there have been some donation and increased awareness (even if it's temporary).

    But I agree, the nature of the "campaign" means that it doesn't educate or teach anyone about child abuse problems. It's a very shallow form of awareness, but there's nothing wrong with that, especially since it wasn't sponsored by any organization.
     

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