Your Facebook Profile Picture Doesn't Do a Damn Thing to Fight Child Abuse

I had a completely different post planned for today... and then I got annoyed.  Annoyance turned to anger.  Anger turned to fury.  Fury became this blog post.

You know, I hope by now I've established in previous posts that I have a sense of humor.  I am all for fun.  I can take a joke.  But someone has to call bullshit on all this phony Facebook activism.

Photo Credit: frogDNA via Flickr Creative Commons

The latest internet meme to pollute my Facebook newsfeed calls for us to change our profile pictures to that of our favorite cartoon character from childhood.  When I first saw friends changing their pictures to beloved cartoon characters, I thought "cute" or "Oh I remember that one," but I didn't know why.  As more pictures changed, the usual calls requesting others to do the same came along with them.  No reason given.  I think someone said something about not wanting to see a human face on Facebook. Ok, whatever.  I even gave in for a couple of days.  I love 80's cartoons after all.  Later I changed it to my Christmas Tree because I was feeling festive and forgot all about the cartoon thing.  Finally, after a couple of weeks, an explanation of the cartoon phenomenon finally pops up on my page in the form of this Facebook status reposted here verbatim.

"change your FB profile picture to a favorite cartoon from your childhood. The goal is to not see a human face on FB till Monday, December, 6th. Join the fight against child abuse."

Really? Pardon me for one second...

HOW THE FUCK DOES CHANGING MY FACEBOOK PROFILE PICTURE FIGHT CHILD ABUSE?

Santa Claus is a Stalker, Trespasser, Vigilante and Might Also be a Pedophile

Photo Credit: Kevin Dooley

I decided to teach my two-year old son about Christmas by watching the movie Elf with him.  Granted, there are probably better movies to demonstrate the Christmas spirit such as It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story, but honestly I find them boring. Besides, I like Will Ferrell.  There are also probably better ways to teach your child about Christmas other than watching television, but my Christmas repertoire is limited.  I grew up in a household where we did not celebrate Christmas and my husband comes from a broken home in the inner city.  I have no holiday traditions and he was happy to have heat.  Needless to say, we don't have much experience to pull from.  Hence we are building our own traditions! We pick out what we like. We toss out what we don't.  There's no "that's how we did it growing up" to bog us down.  Therefore, Elf it is!

* Elf Spoiler alert * So at the end of the movie Zooey Deschanel gets up and starts singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in order to spread Christmas Cheer and save Santa Claus' sleigh.  The boy-child loves it. So we've started singing that song together. A lot. Like all the time. He's obsessed.  Of course I sing along with him.  With all this repetitive singing going on I began to actually really listen to the lyrics. I gotta tell you.  Santa is kind of a creepy motherfucker.  At least by 21st century standards.  Let's dissect these lyrics shall we?