Last week I read that people on Facebook were changing their profile pictures to cartoon characters to fight violence against children (not, as one status I saw wrote “in support of violence against children”). While I was obviously interested, it seemed…silly. How was my profile picture (or posting one’s bra colour) going to raise any money to support this very needy cause. How was everyone on Facebook’s profile picture going to raise any money to support this very needy cause? Who would receive any of these phantom donations? Is awareness enough of a motivation to concept and execute something like this? I mean, I don’t want to be flippant but TV over-indexes on shows which show the horrors of violence against children. Which for the record, I utterly abhor. So I was sceptical to say the least.
This evening I saw a status update which, if its true, made me feel pretty bad about the state of humanity and the Internet in general.
Click the pic for a news article questioning both waves of updates.
So now I don’t know what to think. Every time I see something online, my first reaction isn’t “wow that’s cool” it’s “hmmm…what’s the real for this. is it real or a scam or a marketing campaign?” Have we jaded ourselves this much that this is our first reaction to everything or is the world just not a very nice place anymore where this is the way people try to use social engineering to ruin a child’s life?
This is crazy, did you find out if it’s true?
I posted this on my Fb page the other day after I noticed a bunch of people I work with had changed their profile pix to cartoons. Thanks for the PSA!