Some thoughts on KONY2012

Waking up this morning, in a cosy warm bed with the opportunity to sleep a little more, have a shower, eat some breakfast or watch some TV all available to me, I went on Facebook and Twitter, my usual way of starting the day. How modern of me.

Quite often, there is always a dominant theme going on that people are talking about. I fully expected it to be the Arsenal game last night on a nationwide trend or, more locally, the Reading game last evening (as that’s a shared interest of myself and friends) and the ongoing Student Union elections at my old university, as I remain both interested and in touch with people involved there.

However, this morning, it was none of these things that were the dominant topic on my social media networks of choice. The overwhelming focal point of interest was an embedded YouTube video entitled “KONY 2012” and accompanying messages saying how moving and powerful it was.

For the first six hours of my day, I did not watch it. The reason? My entrenched cynicism.

I could recognise it was a campaign of some sort, most probably for a good cause with universal appeal. However, my cynicism prevented me from watching it as it looked to me, initially, that it was something of a basic approach to looking deep and caring. The kind of thing people could share on their Facebook to show how in touch with issues they are. An easy, almost lazy, way of showing how right on you are and that you want to make a difference, but only if that difference isn’t too difficult to achieve and you can do it by clicking “share” on YouTube or buying yourself a bracelet. A very worthy cause taken on and popularised, very briefly I assumed, that would not go anywhere.

After a while though, I saw that this video was not going away and my interest was very much growing, in retrospect, considering the aims of the project, a very apt way of me eventually watching it.

And yes, just yes.

This is the kind of thing the Internet has the power to do, connect people across the globe on a campaign. The “Cover the Night” events are not everyone’s cup of tea but that is merely one form of the attack plan of Invisible Children, in my opinion.*

For those of us in the UK, we haven’t gone through the massive ‘getting-in-touch-with-the-politicians’ campaign that the American branch of Invisible Children did that resulted in the military advisors being dispatched to Uganda. If you see the “Cover the Night” campaign as condoning vandalism (or similar arguments) you don’t have to do that to support that event.

Get in touch with politicians or just talk about the issue with people at work or online. That’s the point, not even to spread the word of the campaign itself, but to make Kony’s name known.

Is it something of a trend? Possibly yes but that should not make one iota of difference. If turning a campaign for a good cause into something that’s trendy among people rids the world of a Joseph Kony, that end justifies this particular means a billion times over. Posering that people are jumping on a bandwagon to look cool or look worldly is neither here nor there; getting the world talking and more people caring about the subject is all that matters.

Will all of the people who have currently pledged to go on the “Cover The Night” events across the country actually turn up? The fact is that in the modern age, attention spans are short and we all have leapt from one idea to another without following the former through. But, hopefully a fair number will turn out but even a handful is a handful more than would have turned up they had not seen the video in the first place.

Will it result in Joseph Kony appearing before the International Criminal Court? I have my doubts on this due to way the world seems to work. As the video says, the pressure applied by US military advisors helped the first time around so there is hope there.

Ultimately, the best thing for Kony is not being talked about, the worst is being talked about. Make that happen.

*For the record, I myself am unsure about whether to attend a “Cover the Night” event. Deep down, I would like to think so but I am equally as sure that I am as big a product of the Twitter generation (i.e. move on from things swiftly) that I may well lose interest, a depressing self-recognition that I might be able to alter.

EDIT; And thus we have the problem with the Internet and viral marketing. Much has come to light since this blog was posted about the activities of Invisible Children and their operation. This has changed my view of the situation somewhat though I still believe there is scope for large-scale campaigns using the Internet to orchestrate them.
I most certainly got caught up in the emotional pull of it all, which was of course the aim of the situation. This is clearly a huge issue and one that the international community has been attempting to combat over the years. It is also a complex one that a single aim group would struggle to solve.
Lastly, it is a shame however that, when people show an interest in a campaign such as this (despite it's faults) they are shot down for showing passion for something by others.
Remember kids, showing an interest in something isn't cool. Apathy and lethargy are what you should aim for.