Word on the street is that the campaign was made up by a group of pedophiles trying to trick you into accepting their friend request.
NSPCC has denied all involvement in the campaign.
Facebook users getting trolled?
Pretty much sums it up.
I thought the whole concept was more sillly than anything else when I first heard about it. Is this the first time a charity/cause has used this form of advertising? It’s going to be interesting if it actually worked and people donated their money to charities.
A cool thing about American law is that all not-for-profits have to basically disclose all important information all their tax returns-which are public. For example, charaties ALWAYS have to disclose their top 5 highest paid employees by law. Check out prevent child abuse’s disclosures here http://www.preventchildabuse.org/about_us/downloads/03_900_Form.pdf on page 7. It’s going to be interesting to see if people like John Holton are going to be making 200 G’s instead of only 100 G’s because of facebook pictures. Think i’m exhaggerating…even if I am completely wrong here, after April all that shit is transparent and public. After April, people can look at those statments and see if the cartoon thing was a waste of time or actually made a difference.
Hopefully, the facebook stuff does work, charaties get money, and put all the money to good use. usually I’m pretty optimistic about this sort of thing. Charity people usually do a good job and if you check, most people who work for charaties basically work for free doing good deeds.
I’m glad to see this thread.
I tried to explain this point already Drizzt but i was simply told to kill my self so i think your probably wasting you time.
I’m a bit more cynical. Being aware isn’t enough if it doesn’t change anything. It’s like we’re aware of blood diamonds, we’re aware of physically abusive relationships, we’re aware of drunk driving, but being aware isn’t going to help when it still exists. Yes most people won’t do anything but perhaps a few will and that is a few more than when it was started, but I feel one should never trend a cause. The lack of sincerity is reflected in the action resulted by that trend, and in the case with Facebook…with no clear authority directing this, it’s going to bear little fruit.
It’s sort of like celebrities promoting a cause, but for a lot of them, some of the causes are genuinely close to them or even effect them personally. The Boys and Girls Club for Denzel, MS for Micheal J Fox, etc. Even it if does result in trending at least I know it will be continually ongoing due to this celebrity’s dedication to the cause, rather than a fad that’ll leave when the next meme comes along.
What confuses me the most is I can be wrong as well and perhaps this is just the new concept of compassion through social networking. Even if it’s temporary, the fact that this meme/trend has lasted so many days (weeks even) sort of shows it’s longevity in the face of short attention spans. I might be wrong to think that we need a distinct representative in order to lead a cause and this campaign might result in something unexpectedly good from it. However I just feel that the effort put into this campaign/miscommunicaton/cross pollination of memes would have done better if there was just a more directed approach and less of a impulse click.
OC
All I can say is that for how smart most of srk sounds most of the time I cant believe so simple a concept goes right over most of your heads. Well, that and the love you all have for making something simple extremely complicated just so you can hate on it.
Anyhow, you have all helped this cause even if you dont realize it.
I remember a while back, someone told me the cause of why changing your profile pic was important to an old school cartoon character. Sadly, he gave me the wrong info and stated that it was to prevent future actions against pedos.
That’s when I asked, “wouldn’t changing your pic to a cartoon character help organize groups for pedos on Facebook?”
Looks like that article makes the answer to that question clear ;(
I think if someone genuinely wasn’t aware that sometimes, children are abused, but they are in the know enough to operate a computer and create a facebook profile, I don’t think they are likely to change much in the way of preventing child abuse. And for those of us who were aware that child abuse exists, I don’t think many of us learned anything new about it.
Then again there are probably tens of thousands of donations from people who donated to non profits against child abuse for the main purpose of being able to post a holier than thou message to all their friends about how they did more than just changing their profile pic.
An excuse to nostalgia over people’s oldschool cartoon pics. Child abuse is a horrifying thing, but I highly doubt this rallied anyone to any action besides a Google image search…
Its fun, but not helpful.
How did we help it? We are more aware, but has any of us changed anything regarding child abuse rather than our non-helping knowledge of the problem? Did I donate? Did I volunteer to be a counselor? Did you donate? Did you volunteer to be part of a help line? I’d rather see real world applicable results rather than affirmation of success when the requirements for success is set so low. I’m going to start a campaign on if you breath air, you increase your awareness of colon cancer. Oh wow…what a resounding success. Awareness +200.
Here’s a simple concept. Knowing isn’t doing.
Sometimes I wish with all these fucking apps we have on all these iphones, blackberries, androids etc, are just linked up to your credit card. So next time a charity fad comes along, it’ll say “Donate $1 to this cause” Yes or No?" Imagine the amount of funds that would be generated from tapping into the same amount of lazy passive activity of supporting a cause minimalized to a single click that actually does something more that represent someone’s ability to be in the know.
OC
^ exaggerate much?
There you go.
Can’t speak for everyone.
The point he was trying to make is the cause is awareness, and ONLY awareness.
I’m pretty sure it, like everything else on Facebook, was a nostalgia-based circle jerk thinly disguised as a progressive statement.
I thought I was well restrained in exaggeration, I mean I could have brought up how people were aware of what Nazis wanted before they got into power but that’s a bit overkill.
My reading comprehension isn’t broken if that’s what you’re trying to point out. Nor is my ability to recognize that what this campaign set out to do was successful. But my point was we shouldn’t be so proud to celebrate a success where the bar is set so low for fulling it.
This facebook meme was like the special Olympics of campaigns but instead of the mentally challenge “winning” by being the spotlight for a scant moment, there are still real life losers of children still being abused regardless of how many profile pics are changed. I support for all the help we can get, but I don’t support thinking that somehow the laziest of tasks should be heralded like it changed everything. That’s like trying to make a deadline and all you did was hand me a paperclip. You helped but you didn’t really “help”
OC
Oh I definitely agree with your point. Awareness alone does nothing to solve the problem. I just think people weren’t expecting it to in the first place (at least I didn’t), which is why I didn’t really have a problem with it.
Now people are shook cause of the pedophile claims going around. Kids shouldn’t be on Facebook, and if they are parents should make sure they aren’t adding random ass old people.
:lol: at Pat and Dances with Ninjas’ links.
Slacktivism -the search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society’s rescue without actually getting one’s hands dirty, volunteering any of one’s time, or opening one’s wallet.