Chain Facebook message describing “female blackout” is over a year old

A viral Facebook message urges women to set their profile picture as a black square “tomorrow” between 8am and 9pm as part of a project against domestic abuse.

An example of the message as it appeared on Facebook can be seen below –

Tomorrow, female blackout from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Its a movement to show what the world might be like without women. Your profile photo should just be a black square so that men wonder where the women are. Pass it only to women … It’s for a project against domestic abuse. It is no joke. Share it.

Social media “movements” or campaigns that appear in support of a particular cause are very popular on sites like Facebook, which is why Facebook in particular introduced their “profile picture frames” feature that allow their users to easily show support for a specific cause. The above message urges women to make their profile picture a black square, to resemble a “lights out” effect to – according to the message – show what the world would look like without women. The message claims it is a “project” related to domestic abuse.

Whatever your opinions on the effectiveness of such viral campaigns such as this, what we do know is that the above message about changing your profile picture is rather useless.

The message appears to be encouraging a campaign where women everywhere can change their profile pictures to a black rectangle simultaneously, thus creating the effect of a “world without women” as mentioned in the message. However the author of the message has apparently snubbed the importance of including a date in their message. If we overlook the inherent problem with time zone differences, it is still very important that such a message include a specific date detailing exactly when the movement is to take place. Messages that vaguely state “tomorrow” get passed on endlessly by social media users who disregard when their predecessor version of the message was posted.

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And that has been perfectly demonstrated with the message above about changing your profile picture to black, which has been passed around every month since July 2017. There doesn’t appear to be a specific date when the movement is meant to have taken place, but given that it first appeared on Facebook over a year from the date of this article, the originally intended date has most likely long passed.

While this article is not intended to disparage or even discourage the use of such social media campaigns, (we know that there are people who both support them and dislike them) if those intent on creating or propagating them fail to adhere to some basic common sense guidelines, what we’re left with is an endlessly spreading message that serves no real purpose, such as the message above.