Fads

[Seil]

So I dun know if anyone's logged on FB recently, but if you have, you've probably been greeted with nostalgia. Apparently:

Change your facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. By Tuesday there should be no humanfaces on facebook, but an invasion of memories. This is to support "Stop Violence Against Children"

To which my brother argues:

Originally Posted by Me Brother

How does changing your profile picture to a cartoon character fight child abuse in any way, shape or form? These Facebook things are getting borderline moronic.

And at least one person had this as a status:

IMPORTANT:the whole changing your profile picture to your favourite cartoon chatacter thing was actually created by a group of pedophiles, because if children see pictures of cartoons they will add them, it was currently on the programme Internet frauds and will apparently be on tv some ...time tonight, put this as your status to warn people and change your
profile pictures back!!!!!

So far I've seen Gargoyles, Dexter's Laboratory, CatDog, Cardcaptors, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Sailor Moon, The Lion King, Jem, The Fox And The Hound, The "Stay Alert, Stay Safe" rabbits, Power Rangers, Calvin and Hobbes, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Winnie The Pooh, Biker Mice From Mars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh, and that girl rabbit from Space Jam.

While it's an interesting idea, and a trip down memory lane, I agree with my brother that it's not really doing that much to combat child abuse. It's more along the lines of those spam mails you get that "Bill Gates Will Donate $100 to ___________ Every Time You Forward This!!!!!11!" Come to think of it, there's also the same mentality to "liking" or "friending" different charitable organizations on FB without actually, y'know, donating to them or anything.

I thought it was as neat as it was stupid, but then I thought about fads in general. We go along to a lot of things - like here on NPF, we had the Sexy Dead People thread, Meister got mad at the EdxRoy manlove avatar thread, POS had changed the Geth to kittens, Yodadog is a running joke.

There's a nice bit about this done by Cracked:

Studies show cult members are just as intelligent, if not more so, than the general public. And around 95 percent of cult members are perfectly sane (when they join up, anyway), with no history at all of real psychological problems. They're not stupid, and they're not crazy.

Of course this only serves to make cults even scarier. How in the hell do these groups get people--who are every bit as sane and smart as your best friend--to join up?

OK, ask yourself this: Why do rebellious biker types all immediately go out and start dressing and talking exactly like other biker types?

As social animals we are hard-wired to want to belong to a group. It's a need as basic and real as hunger or sex. When we get cut off from our group--say we lose a job, or move to a new city, or break up with our girlfriend--we go a little crazy. Cults are very, very good at finding people in that exact moment of weakness, and saying exactly the right things. Those pamphlets that sound so corny and transparent to you, read like a glorious breath of fresh air to somebody caught in one of those rough spots.

So sure, when we're in our normal, stable state of affairs we like to imagine ourselves coolly shooting down all of the charismatic cult leader's stupid-ass claims with the power of pure critical thinking. But remember that the next time you're drunk dialing your ex-girlfriend in the middle of the night, or stalking her new boyfriend, sneaking into the parking lot where he works and pooping on the hood of his car.

If you can't remember ever doing something dumb and embarrassing because you were feeling lonely and rejected, well, either you're very young, or you were just too drunk at the time to retain the memory.

And once these people are in the cult they realize that, no, not all cult members wind up as part of some bizarre suicide ceremony. Most lead normal, successful lives.

I don't know if it's true on this forum, because nearly every single one of us listens to some indie music, fondly remember retro cartoons and old movies/movie stars, does some form of art and share similar political beliefs in the vein of hard-right-wingers are hard-right-weiners. So maybe there's a correlation? Or am I just wrong and stupid, as usual?