No Human Faces on Facebook? What? Isn't that why its called FACEbook? What do we call it now then? Funnydrawingbook? The latest craze on facebook is campaign from an unnamed volunteer who aims to raise awareness about Worldwide Violence Against Children and Child Abuse through the simple gesture of changing your Facebook Profile Picture into your favorite childhood cartoon characters. One glance at your news feed will show you how many of your friends are on this latest bandwagon. I jumped on with both feet the first post I saw telling me.......DO IT! You KNOW you'll have FUN!! Join the fight against child abuse and change your default Facebook picture to a cartoon character... The goal is to not see a human face on Facebook until Monday, Dec. 6th. And wouldn't you know it I did have fun doing it. I also had fun watching other people doing it too.(omg that sounded bad) (its scary in my head)
It made pause and think back to my childhood. Somewhere I, and I'm sure many of you, haven't gone in awhile. It brought back memories full of fun, laughter, excitement, and innocence. I started thinking of all the shows me and my brothers use to watch on Saturday morning. Parked with our blankets on the living room floor, clad in our pj's eating our captain crunch cereal while our parents got to sleep in.
I frantically began my search for my cartoon profile pic. I typed 80's cartoons (yes I just dated myself) and memories of The Smurfs, The Care Bears, The Ewoks, Fraggle Rock , He -man, Rainbow Bright, Monchichis came flooding back like a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. Laughing like a maniac browsing through my friends list to see who chose what for their profile pic had me yearning for the good old days when life was a lot less complicated. I started to understand sayings such as " if I only knew then what I know now "
I started to wonder What is this all about? Where did this thing start? It appears to have sprung from a facebook page titled Campaign To End Violence Against Children - Cartoon Faces. The page doesn't claim any affiliation with a particular organization. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. October is Child Abuse Prevention Month in Ontario.
Some people are asking so whats the dealio? Mostly haters making such comments as -
" I still don't get how putting pictures does anything...for all of these things... people will still beat their kids..."
" Waste of time and just another reason for people to jump on the 'bandwagon' and FEEL like their helping without doing jack @#$% "
" What the freak does changing your profile picture have anything to do with fighting child abuse? Changing your profile picture to a photo of Captain Planet isn't going to keep a child from being backhanded "
It gets people talking and thinking about it and we should be talking and thinking about it everyday. Not just in October or April. It is raising awareness to those who may not think about it. People are talking about it and asking questions. Changing our pictures to memories from our favorite childhood cartoon is a way to make everyone want to participate. Posting pictures of our favorite cartoons isn't going to stop people from abusing children, but it will catch a lot of attention, Listen, don't you realize if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem.
