A couple weeks or so ago my friends and I did the cartoon thing just because. Now it's making a comeback, this time with the whole child abuse cause attached. I agree it's ridiculous. So I changed my pic to Hand Banana, the lab-created-glove-dog rapist from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Then I made a donation to Prevent Child Abuse America and challenged my friends to do the same.

http://www.preventchildabuse.org/index.shtml

I changed mine to Fritz
The Cat.

How about we change our pictures to support a cause that is actually an urgent problem? Take your pick:

Pictures of helicopters, to protest helicopter parenting, and to protest the continuous exaggeration of risks to children.

Pictures of empty wallets, to symbolize ballooning governmental debt, that will bankrupt all of us.

Aha! That explains why my use of Pedobear got me so many defriendings. I tried superpoking them back, and that seemed to make it worse.

I used Walter Moore's quote as my status update, then asked for volunteers to come do 63 needy children's christmas stockings with me today. Already have all the items, just need to get them in each stocking. No takers so far... I guess actually doing something for abused, neglected or needy children is much too difficult for the self absorbed douchebags on my friends list. I should probably delete all the people who changed their pic to a cartoon while sitting on their asses instead of doing something to help kids. Ugh.

Charity marketing often blends vanity and altruism - e.g. buy this wrist band and wear it to show your support for breast cancer research. The ability for people to display their concern is a huge incentive for making that donation.

The CCF campaign is all vanity and no altruism, it's just empty self promotion. What's annoying is that it's actually costing the cause. The commitment to participate yields nothing, but people feel that they've paid their tribute to remedying child abuse. So action that may have resulted in material benefits to child abuse prevention have been spent on a symbolic gesture.

On Ragbrai a couple years ago, a group was handing out stickers with the words "child abuse" and the red circle with slash across it, as in "ban child abuse" or "child abuse is bad."

Well no shit. I could just as easily put a sticker on my bike that said the same of bubonic plague, cancer, rabies, or mosquitoes. What am I going to do instead, display a sticker that says "Yay for child abuse?" Three cheers! It just seemed asinine to walk around saying you think such an obviously bad thing is bad. But what to do about it?

My mom grew up in a family with two other siblings, an older sister and a younger brother. For whatever reason, they were stuck with a mother who just couldn't bring herself to love little girls. She treated the son like he was the crown prince, but put her daughters down all the time, telling them they were ugly, doing things to humiliate them. Sometimes they were subject to physical abuse as well. Their dad didn't do anything to stop it - he seemed to espouse the idea that parenting was wimmins work, so momma can raise the kids however she wants.

This kind of stuff doesn't make the front page, but I don't think it's the kind of problem you solve with a raffle or a donation. If you want to stop child abuse, look around you, at your friends and family. Every abused kid lives in a community of some sort, so what is that community doing while the neighbor kid is getting knocked around?

Which is why I posted this: http://everythingyouknowaboutenglishiswrong.com/images/KatzenjammerKids1.jpg

So, I saw that my kids and friends were changing their FB pics to cartoons. I changed mine and asked my daughter what was going on, and then read another friend's status and got the skinny.

Then I took my dog for a walk and thought about it -- nothing I do will EVER stamp out child abuse, unfortunately.

Then I came & read your blog, and copied Walter Moore's quote into my status and changed my pic into a cartoon sheep.

Then I thought some more and remembered an organization in town that collects and donates new PJs and books to kids in our foster care system; it is 100% volunteer-led with no staff salaries. So I posted a link to their FB site, self-righteous booger than I am.

Then I decided to donate PJs in the sizes of my granddaughter and 3 nieces.

So -- did that Cartoon campaign have an impact? I am sure my kids are laughing at me now. (And hopefully will find a way to actually do something).

And - @Casey: my first thought on reading your post was, "Where are you? I'll be right over!" Then I remembered everything I had to do today. But if you'd asked me a week in advance, I'd be there. I hope you had some friends show up! Thanks for what you're doing!

This make me laugh and think of my daughter (16), who gets furious when she sees news about walk-athons and 5k runs for charity, especially the ones that ask for sponsors. She sees it as getting others to donate to your charity while you enjoy your usual exercise/social networking (and clog up the roads). Her rant: "Why can't they just go fix something or clean something or donate their own damn money?!"

So, if Joe Guy is looking at someone's profile and sees a picture of Sebastian the Crab, he's going to automatically think to himself, "Oh, that's right, there are kids being abused...I better do something to help stop that...oh, Lumiere, that should do it!"?

I'm all for getting people talking about things, but like Moore said, "raising awareness" isn't comparable to action. There was sort of a mini-backlash a few years ago against all the breast cancer awareness stuff. There were many people who felt like Moore does: much of the time, this cosmetic change is in lieu of action or donation, which doesn't really help the problem. Unless you bought it from a place that is using the money toward research, wearing a pink ribbon isn't doing a damn thing about cancer. I'd argue that the cartoon thing is even worse: using free images that aren't going to trigger thoughts about curbing child abuse.

What the organization should have done was have someone design original profile pics and have the supporters buy them, with the proceeds going directly to the charity. With the huge numbers of Facebook users, they would only have to charge a nominal fee to get quite a bit of money. Many organizations do things like that so they can actually get money out of the people who are "raising awareness." Awareness means nothing if people don't then use it to take some kind of action.

Change your picture to one making fun of Mohammed, and then get killed! It's a win-win!

I'm with Pirate Jo. Look around your community because no matter how wealthy, there are abused and neglected kids who need help. I did change my profile picture to a cartoon but I also have taken in two kids separately who were being abused. I have also done fund raising for a Youth Services center in my town that helps at risk youth. I'm not saying it to toot my horn but to show how easy it is to help. Thanks to Pirate Jo for pointing out what really helps.

I find these campaigns very aggravating. As everyone said, they don't do a damned thing, but those who do it feel like they're doing something (but aren't). In the past few months, it's been 'post the color of the bra you're wearing right now, for breast cancer awareness' 'post this for just one hour if you've had a family member with cancer/diabetes(substitute different ailments)'. The 'change your status for one hour' things are just glurge in a new form, combined with chain letter threats...something tear-jerking followed by 'I dare you to post this for one hour' or 'I bet only two or three of my friends will post this, although I want you all to'...

Ugh.

When someone rallies around a symbol, it can bring togetherness. A flag, a religious symbol or even a ribbon of a certain color can bring unity. But a random cartoon character? What does that say?

I changed my icon to a cartoon cause I saw everyone else doing it. I thought I should change mine to THUNDARR....The Barbarian!!! I had no idea what the intent was behind it.

When I found out what it was about, I laughed. There is no unity in a random cartoon character. How would Captain Caveman stamp out child abuse and rally to a cause? When it is a random symbol, it can be viewed differently and incorrectly.

I changed mine blindly... and It's a good thing I did not choose Herbert from Family Guy.

A new social media campaign known as Childhood Cartoon Faces hopes to raise awareness of violence against children by encouraging Facebook users to ditch traditional pictures in favor of the cartoon images.

Except it's not even that!

It started completely without relation to child abuse "awareness".

@Sigivald Yeah, Cartoon Network ran with it on November 21. I picked it up from a friend on November 19th. Most of my friends had already moved on by the time someone attached child abuse as the cause on December 3rd. Get yer own damned meme!