On The Facebook Trend

This is not meant as a judgment on anyone, but I need to rant. Every once in awhile, it becomes trendy on Facebook to change your profile picture to something or other. About a year ago, people changed their profile pictures to their doppelgänger. Another time, former fans of the Pokemon craze of the late 90s early 2000s changed their picture to their favorite Pokemon character. Those are all in fun, and that's fine. Facebook is a social network, as everyone knows, and if people want to do that they can.

But the new current trend kind of bothers me. "In support of prevention of Violence Against Children, change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday, no human faces on Facebook, but rather an invasion of memories."

Does that strike anyone else as well, ridiculous? I can understand spreading awareness about a certain cause, but changing your profile picture to a cartoon character does not accomplish this. People will comment, "oh I loved that show" to which a person might reply, "oh, I know, I watched it every day." End of story. No one will say, "Yeah, doesn't it make you think of the horrible violence against children that occurs every day? We should donate money to [insert name of cause] to ensure that all kids can grow up with memories of watching cartoons like we did."

It's just silly. If I want to change my profile picture to a cartoon just for fun, fine. But having a cartoon as my profile picture doesn't support anyone or anything other than well maybe reminding people of a cartoon show they used to like and causing them to add it to their Christmas wish list.

Something similar was popular on Facebook a while back too that also struck me as equally ridiculous. "Paste this as your status if you are against AIDS." To say that you are against something implies that other people might be "for" it. Is anyone really "pro-AIDS"? No. Of course not. Those types of statuses are nothing more than chain mail, in my opinion. If you want people to know you stand for something, just "like" that cause on Facebook and people will see it. But don't like it to ease your conscience or to make you look good or because everyone else is. If you really care about the cause, support it financially or volunteer with it.

So anyway, I just had to rant.