Recently, a facebook campaign was started requesting people to change their profile pictures to a cartoon character from their childhood. The post that was shared claimed that this was being done in aid of the NSPCC and to create awareness of child abuse.
Obviously there were the usual 'bah humbuggers' who commented saying how is changing your profile picture going to help, how is it going to raise money etc? Nevertheless, most people obliged and over the next couple of days hundreds and thousands of facebookers did as requested and changed their profile pics.
Then, another viral arrived on home pages saying that the campaign was actually started by a paedophile group who wanted to attract children by using these cartoon characters. This message also stated that it was on the news!
All of a sudden the cartoon characters started disappearing like wildfire from profiles. Very few actually bothered to check out if this claim was true of false. Then came the comments from people who had done some research and it emerged that no, there was nothing about this on any news webpage. And apart from that, how could an adult changing their profile aid paedophiles? Think about it, no one has to accept friend requests from people they don't know and as Facebook is only open to 18+ year olds, there are no children on it anyway. The NSPCC facebook page stated that although they had not started the original cartoon request, they were extremely grateful for the awareness it was creating.
Eventually, like any viral, the whole thing died down and the cyber world has moved on to a new 'game', the numbers game (that's a whole different blog for another day).
But the end result ---> NSPCC Facebook Status: 'Thank you to everyone who has been supporting the NSPCC! As a result of the Facebook cartoon campaign, we have experienced a massive jump in traffic to our website and an unprecedented surge in donations.'
The power of the Web!!!
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