Going off that last post discussing getting people to become active in a protest by making it simple in on the Internet, this next post will discuss something very similar but with a little different result.
It was something that if you visited any sort of social media site, even those that loosely define themselves as such, you couldn’t avoid seeing or hearing it about it. I’m talking about the Kony 2012 video that was set up by the organization Invisible Children. The video was released on March 5th, 2012 and was a video detailing Invisible Children’s “Stop Kony” campaign, which was an effort to have Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony arrested for his crimes. The video’s goal was to make people aware of this situation and to push people to call for his arrest.
The video exploded and became viral almost immediately. You couldn’t log onto Facebook without seeing that ten of your friends had posted the video on their walls or were talking about it. Invisible Children’s goal of getting this info out clearly worked and they did it in such a simple way. All you had to do was watch the video and then click share and boom; there it was for all your Facebook friends to see.
But this wasn’t as black and white as it seemed. As days went on issues began arising over the video. While what Kony did was bad, some people believed that Invisible Children distorted facts to make the situation look worse than it really was. Some people began informing others that Kony and his supporter’s left Uganda six years prior to this video. So the video wasn’t as straightforward and truthful as people thought. It wasn’t straight good versus bad.
But it didn’t matter that the facts weren’t all straight. It mattered that people got the info they needed and more importantly, they shared that information. Also by watching that video and sharing it, you felt as if you were truly doing something good. You were fighting the forces of evil and putting a stop to a criminal warlord all from the comfort of your home. The video also linked you to merchandise you could buy, which funded the “Stop Kony”, campaign, or so people thought. But the fact of the matter is that they created an easy way for people to feel involved when really sharing that video didn’t do anything in the long run other than spread information that wasn’t entirely truthful.
The fact that so many people fell, or bought into this video, kind of shows just how little we know with what’s happening around the world. The fact that Kony hadn’t really been prominent in six years takes away some of the impact of the video. The rally of support behind the video was good but, to me at least, it seemed more like a money making scheme than a legit attempt to get a war criminal arrested. I also hated how multiple people on my Facebook feed quickly became social activists after sharing the Kony video. It’s amazing how many social activists come out of the woodwork in an attempt to look smart on a social media site, when they seriously knew nothing of an issue that has been happening for quite some time before seeing this movie that took millions of dollars to make. It was just annoying and another example of people creating this identity for them online that isn’t any way related to their real identity.
But in terms of getting everybody’s attention and creating a lot of media buzz, Invisible Children struck gold with this one.
Just please in the future people remember, clicking “Share to Facebook” does not make you an activist.
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