Hi everyone! I am sure a lot of you did not think it would be long until I wrote something that might be considered controversial. Well, you were right, of course! Here goes!
Over the last week or so many of you, if not all of you, probably saw a Facebook post on your wall telling you to change your profile pic to that of a cartoon character. The reason that most of us saw was basically to increase knowledge of child abuse/child abuse prevention. I’ll get to the in a second. Let me first talk about how all of a sudden someone is reporting that the people who started this was a child pedophilia group. As is usually the case in a situation like this, no one seems to know exactly who is making this claim. But to be fair, no one really knows where the claim that it was about child abuse came about either.
My question is what did the pedophilia group plan to have accomplished, if they were truly behind this? Did they think it would show them who the children were on Facebook? My friend Ben posted a good question regarding this on one of my Facebook status’. He asked “how would they know they were children?” That is what I want to know. Unless this pedophile group already knew who children are, how would a cartoon picture point out all the children on Facebook to them? Especially since I know a hell of a lot of adults, me included, who changed their profile pictures to cartoon characters. Pedophiles, by definition are not trying to find out who adults are. So what was their master plan here? Someone please inform me, because even though I have tried to figure it out and checked out a couple of websites, I cannot see how changing profile pictures to cartoon characters would further the agenda of a pedophilia group. By the way, did any of you think about pedophilia at all while this was all happening?
Let me now talk about the fact that it was all supposed to be about child abuse awareness/prevention. The National Child Abuse Prevention month is April. So is it possible that it was not a group affiliated with child abuse that started this? Yes, of course. A lot of events like this occur during the awareness month for the issue at hand. Even if this was April, that would still be possible. Let me ask you all a question, though. When you read the post asking you to change your picture, did you at all think about child abuse and the prevention of it? You did? Doesn’t that mean that what was supposedly supposed to happen actually happened? No matter what person or group started it? Isn’t people thinking about child abuse prevention a GOOD thing?
Every time someone or some group starts something like this, it turns into a Facebook conspiracy. The bra color one, you know the one where women were supposed to put just the color of their bra on their status? The one that was supposed to make people think about breast cancer? And confuse all men by making this only known to women? Yes, that one. Guess what? It had nothing to do with breast cancer!! But didn’t the “controversy” surrounding it all get people talking about breast cancer? So once again, it worked. Personally, not only did I think about breat cancer, but it also made me feel kind of “dirty” (you know as in dirty old woman dirty?) putting the color of the bra I was wearing on FB. In fact, I did it every time I wore a different color bra. Sorry, I digress.
Another fun one for me, which was also one that men were not supposed to know about, was to put as your status message where you put your purse when you get home and begin it by saying “I like it…”. For instance, if you put your purse on the table, you would put “I like it on the table”. I hate to confess this, but this also brought out the dirty old lady in me.
The good thing about making controversies about some of these things is it really does get people talking about what they were supposed to talk about anyway. Sometimes, such as with the cartoon character profile pictures and child abuse, the simple act alone made people think about it. No controversy needed there. The bra color one may have needed the controversy, maybe not. The purse one, let’s face it, was just all in good fun. What did we gain by all of these things? Hopefully some knowledge, hopefully we all put some good thought into some important topics, and hopefully some good discussion. What did we lose by all of these things? Changing a profile picture would include finding a picture if you did not already have one, a quick Yahoo or Google image search would accomplish that, and uploading the picture to you Facebook account, maybe a minute, maybe more, maybe less, depending on your connection speed. Putting your bra color on your status message? That could vary on how many bra colors your wear and how often you change the colors. I would say no more than a minute’s worth of typing, probably a lot less. Now for typing out where you leave your purse, after you type I like it. Again, I would venture to say no more than a minute, and probably a lot less.
Another friend, Aaron, commented on the same Facebook status that Ben asked his question. Aaron said: Why some people try to wreck something, I shall never know. That is something I will never understand. In the great scheme of life, not one of the things I discussed here are that big of a deal. In fact, for a lot of people, they were fun! So why do people decide to make such simple things into such controversies? Don’t take life so seriously, have more fun, and let your inner child come out and play sometimes. Also, please don’t change your profile picture until you are ready to, Not because of some controversy that someone who was bored tried to create.
~Janet Lee Smith~
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