why does everyone have cartoon pics as their facebook pics?

I'mma just copy+paste my little rant from FB:

"Change your profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face until Monday, Dec 6th. The cause? To stop child abuse! Now go change your picture & invite all you friends to do the same."

Whole thing is ridiculous. Change your profile picture to a cartoon character if you want. That's fine; I obviously do it too. But how the heck does doing so stop child abuse in any way?

My problem with it is that unlike, say, Spirit Day a while back, when everybody wore purple to make a statement about a current event, nothing is really going to happen here. Saying "We are all against people bullying gays!" means something, because unfortunately there are actually people who think it is ok. Child abuse is universally considered to be, well, bad, so saying "We are all against child abuse!" means... absolutely nothing.

Additionally, while it does raise awareness/encourage people to take an active role... it doesn't do enough. Even saying something like "try to donate to charity x or y" would have been better. One person donating a few dollars to a charity does so much more in this situation than a few people (who are probably teenagers without kids) changing their profile picture.

/cynicaloldmanrant

Oh, to clarify: the "obviously I do it too" thing refers to how I had Sugisaki as my profile picture for a long time; only changed it recently to Minamimoto.