On Tuesday afternoon, my Facebook and Twitter feeds exploded with the same link: Kony 2012.@@spelled right@@
For those who haven’t seen the video, “Kony 2012” is a film by the nonprofit group Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa, “famous” so he can be brought to justice for his crimes, which include abducting children and forcing the boys to become child soldiers and the girls into becoming sex slaves.
Dozens of my Facebook friends have shared the link, encouraging people to get involved, get educated and, most importantly, donate. Twitter has become overrun with the idea, and “Invisible Children” has been trending ever since. Celebrities from Rihanna to Diddy to Justin Bieber@@all spelled right@@ have all been getting the word out about this guy.
I thought the Kony trend would die out pretty quickly, but when Wednesday afternoon rolled around and I was still being inundated with the link, I decided to check it out.
The images were violent and upsetting, but quite honestly, it wasn’t the worst thing I had ever seen in my life; the videos I watched in seventh-grade history class about the Holocaust will always — I hope — be the most horrific things I will ever have to see. The filmmakers blatantly compared Kony’s crimes with those of Hitler, which shocked me, but not for the reasons Invisible Children wanted.
What is it about this cause that has our generation so riled up? What’s different about this movement that’s making even my most apathetic, spaced-out Facebook friends stand up and shout?
Yes, Kony’s crimes are atrocious — the film does a pretty good job of establishing that. Invisible Children estimates that some 30,000 children have been abducted during Kony’s 20-plus-year reign, while the World Bank put that number as high as 66,000 back in 2007. The New York Times adds that Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army@@http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/08/2683661/critics-say-video-distorts-fight.html@@ has killed “tens of thousands of people, burning down huts and hacking off lips.”
No one would argue that this man needs to be stopped. But where was this outrage in the summer of 2011, when a drought enveloped East Africa and killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people — more than half of them children less than 5 years old? Where were the Facebook statuses when 29,000 children under 5 died within a span of 90 days between May and July 2011, and 3 million Somalian people — 3 million — were forced into a mass exodus across the desert, desperately searching for food and water?
Why don’t people encourage donating to charity all the time? Why have the millennials designated this cause as the only one worthy of their full attention?
I’ll tell you why: Because it’s easy. Welcome to activism, social-media style.@@DROP THE MIC, WALK AWAY@@
Now, with just the click of a “share” button, you too can feel like you’re saving the world. You can paper your city with posters and stickers (only $1!) during Invisible Children’s “Cover the Night” event (which, intentionally or not, is to take place on April 20 — Hitler’s birthday)@@accurate@@. You can buy “action kits” (only $30!) which include nifty bracelets so you can show everyone how generous you are.
The brilliance of this campaign is that it has harnessed our generation’s main reason for living — telling everyone how amazing we are — and used it to their advantage@@YES!!! Okay, sorry I’ll calm my knockers@@. They made a feel-good film that targeted a specific problem and explained how we, just by watching the movie, were already a part of the solution. How awesome are we?
They repeated over and over that awareness, as opposed to action, was what this cause really needed. They showed us images of smiling, young (mostly white) Americans stoically standing up for justice in matching T-shirts@@ap style@@, and threw some Mumford and Sons music on in the background to give it some hipster cred. They pulled at our heartstrings with a passionate little blond kid proclaiming that he too wanted to go to Africa to save the children. And even better, they showed us how we could make a difference using our favorite website in the world: Facebook.
Now I’m not arguing that Kony 2012 is not a worthy cause; though I certainly have some questions about where donations to Invisible Children go and the overall wisdom of such a large-scale, one-sided publicity campaign, I think that anyone who is in favor of a conscripted child army has some serious problems. I am pro-charity; in fact, I donate every month to the Red Cross@@http://www.redcross.org/@@ (#humblebrag). I love the spirit of social justice that has permeated social media the last few days. But “liking” something on Facebook or tweeting a link doesn’t give you the right to call yourself an activist.
Activism requires action. Sharing a YouTube video can definitely raise awareness, but real change is brought about on a national and international level. If people really want to help #stopkony, then they should be writing letters to Congress instead of telling people that even just critiquing the video is tantamount to supporting Kony, as some of my Facebook friends said.
Or better yet, they should find another cause worth fighting for. America’s college students seem to have this one covered.