If you’re a Facebook user – which, if you’re reading this, in all likelihood you are! – then you probably noticed lots of you friends changing their profile picture to a cartoon character over the weekend and wondered what it was all about.

Quite soon after, speculation began on Facebook and Twitter about the campaign being an awareness-raiser, or even a fundraiser, by NSPCC, or by a ‘free agent’ supporter wanting to help NSPCC.  It generated quite a wide range of opinions, as you can see from this screenshot of Rob Dyson’s wall, and it looks like it even generated a fair few donations for NSPCC too:

However, in a statement via their Twitter page on Monday, NSPCC confirmed that this was not the case, saying, “Although the NSPCC did not originate the childhood cartoon Facebook campaign, we welcome the attention it has brought to the work we do.”

From what I can tell, the meme actually started in Greece or Cyprus, without any particular objective other than to create a meme, and has also generated significant traction – andheated debate about “slacktivism” – in the US, too.

Looks like this is yet one more user-generated meme that, while associated with a charity, and provoking a fair bit of discussion about that charity, was not generated by a charity… [I also blogged about the breast cancer awareness one here].

Tags: awareness, cartoon, Charities, Charity, Facebook, Fundraising, meme, socialmedia, socialweb