STOP Kony 2012!
I have to admit, I clicked ‘play’ on the Kony 2012 video when it showed up for the twenty-first time on my Facebook newsfeed. I clicked it hoping to gain some insight about Uganda and child soldiers and become inspired to learn more about it. It did not, however, take me more than sixty seconds of watching it to realize that Kony 2012 was just yet another pointless, brainwashing Internet trend. Within a day, there were 42 friends on my Facebook who had shared this viral video on Invisible Children fighting against Joseph Kony. Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign basically aims to make Kony famous by raising support for his arrest and bringing international justice to the children affected in Uganda.
What really disappointed me is that people were easily persuaded or moved by a simple Internet video, tagging their own comments on the video like, “if you watch one thing this year, it has to be this.” While it is great that they found something that really intrigued their mind – the video, not the situation in Uganda – it’s disturbing that these people actually do not genuinely care at all. People generally post on Facebook Internet memes from 9gag.com or put status updates about their latest shopping sprees. These same people were all of a sudden enthusiastic about “making Kony famous” and sharing Invisible Children’s campaign video. It really proves that Invisible Children set their target right – nothing spreads like wildfire more on Facebook than anywhere else. In addition, Invisible Children made this video disturbing enough for people to share the video after one view: they most likely did not Google the issue in Uganda and researched who Joseph Kony and the LRA really are.
I’m not trying to be cynical, but, based on many trends on Facebook I have witnessed over the years, these people will forget about Kony and Uganda as soon as this video stops being a trend. They have become exactly what the media wants us to be: easily swayed by the very information that they are given, pretending to care, participating in a new term called “slacktivism.” It is highly unlikely that these people will actually leave their computer desk and walk into their community to work on fighting against LRA and raising awareness. People just follow what the majority follows because it’s convenient and intriguing.
Although I am not an expert on Uganda, I have read that Invisible Children has not been declared non-profit. Most of the donations sent to Invisible Children are spent on the organization itself: the money gets lost in translation, and there is only a small faction of the money raised that will actually reach Uganda. There are a few other options, like Doctors without Borders, that actually do more credible work without strategically manipulating the information given to the general population. I’m quite disappointed and scared that we still fall so easily into the traps set by some organizations – we are the very puppets of political manipulators.
I completely agree with you. I think this whole campaign is very misleading. I didn’t know that Invisible Children wasn’t even a non-profit, that’s pretty concerning.
One of my biggest qualms with the “invisible children” thing is — invisible to WHOM? It’s like, these kids are invisible until Western countries acknowledge their existence and then all of a sudden they are “visible”? We define their visibility? This is just so problematic.
You raise a great point. It’s an idea I learned in Women’s Studies — the notion of the dominant/violent eye/”I”. The West presumes its superiority and patriarchy and feels that it is in its right to make the world see things as it sees it. Without even realizing, the Western culture is violently subordinating the non-West, and this “invisible” children exemplifies that perfectly.