KONY2012 - it's taken off. Thanks to social media and a little button called SHARE, the video that was launched 72 hours ago, has become a worldwide phenomenon. Putting on my old advertising hat - what an incredible amount of unearned media coverage it's received!
A little known Ugandan warlord has now achieved international recognition all thanks to a charity called Invisible Children and within three days, they knocked off one of the goals off of their list - make him famous. Celebrities, politicians, ordinary citizens have all jumped on the bandwagon and watched a 30 minute video, told their friends to watch and many have pledged to take action, either by just sharing the information, buying a $30 action kit or taking part on April 20th in the Cover the Night movement.
Well, with every successful campaign, those that are critical of its success come out of the woodwork to point out all the lies propagated by Invisible Children and how shady they are. There have been blogs, articles in VICE, and hundreds, if not thousands of response videos to KONY on Youtube all questioning the motivations that Invisible Children has or the goals and expectations they have set out.
The debate is great - discourse has always served to help enlighten and educate. What's funny is that the majority of the anti-KONY2012 (which is totally inappropriately named as it makes it seem that they are pro-KONY), is doing the exactly the same thing they are accusing those that support the KONY2012 movement are doing - jumping on the bandwagon.
To use the 99%/1% analogy (because it's been so popular this year, cough, bandwagon), it seems that 99% of the people raging against the KONY2012 video is doing the exact same thing - they are just SHARE-ing articles of thought pieces put forth by critics of KONY2012. They add their microblog thought to it - i.e. "before everyone jumps on the bandwagon, they better read this first" but not any true thought or an opinion on the piece themselves. It's truly the 1% that's having the discourse here about KONY, whether they be pro or con. Everyone else is just drifting to those with the microphones.
What gets even worse is when the critics come out to play, they arm themselves with "I don't mean to be negative but..." and then do nothing but be negative and cynical. It's like when someone says to you, "with all due respect" what they really mean is "fuck you." That negativity then starts an emotional counter attack from the pro-KONY2012 side, and everything turns into a FOX News Bill O'Reilly segment. Let's be honest, neither side can claim they have a 100% lock on all of their facts, and it will take more action than just clicking SHARE or buying a kit to make a difference in that part of the world, but let's look on the bright side folks.
What Invisible Children and the group of filmmakers have done has been an extraordinary thing that only once in a while manifests itself. In my opinion, it's been over five years since we've seen a campaign like this, and the Obama election campaign didn't have the same amount of global impact as KONY2012 has within even the same time period. It's storytelling at it's best - making people care about a topic and taking them through a journey that is both interesting and educational. Of course this success would bring out jealousy in people - and a lot of the criticism is rooted in just that. And the majority of the criticism here is rooted in the organization, not the issue, which is an important point to differentiate. If anything, Invisible Children has put this issue in the minds of millions around the globe.
What this campaign has done well is making a bunch of people aware and care about an issue that they knew nothing about 72 hours ago, to start looking into it and having a discussion with their friends, and take some sort of action - either by sharing or participating in the movement. It's motivated young people to say that they can make a difference - and who knows, could inspire and influence those young people to choose a life of activism over some silly corporate job.
Anyway, that's just my view of things.
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