There is a new disease that has just been discovered – it’s called “Kony 2012 Fever”.  Symptoms include deluding one’s self, blindly giving away your money on a whim, thinking you’re a social activist after watching a 30 minute video and ignoring problems that have been existent for over 20 years.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t for a minute condone what Joseph Kony has done, the pain and the suffering he has put so many through.  What I object to is the way that every Tom, Dick and Harry has jumped on the bandwagon like they’re some sort of altruistic hero all of a sudden.

I was raised to be sceptical, or put more euphemistically, not to take things on face value, or to judge a book solely by its cover.  I’m afraid that there are a great many out there who have just jumped head first into this cause without doing the necessary research needed to be better informed.  Sadly, it’s a symptom of our ‘instant porridge’ generation.

First of all, the Kony 2012 video makes a play at the heartstrings of the populace with the all too familiar techniques – flashy montages with uplifting/catchy tunes, sombre/dramatic music for those ‘touching’ moments, and last but not least, the clearly blatant emotive use of a four year old child.

It is the last technique listed above that I have a problem with.  Jason Russell, one of the people behind Invisible Children Inc. and maker of the Kony 2012 ‘documentary’, blatantly uses his four-year-old son to elicit an emotional response from the video’s viewers, because isn’t it so cute to have a four-year-old spouting simplistic sentences?

Really, what’s he there for anyway?  Sure, I understand Jason wants to educate his son about his cause, but in a video like this?  Seriously?  To my mind, the only reason Jason’s son is in the video is to stroke Jason’s already inflated ego, with the simplistic message of “Daddy good, Kony bad.”

There are also some questions that the video throws up that disturb me.  The video claims that Kony has been committing these atrocities for 26 years.  If that is the case, why are we only just hearing about it now?  Why was this sort of thing not brought to our attention sooner?  Why wasn’t it plastered across our media in the 1990s?  Social media has been around since 2003 (My Space – 2003, Facebook – 2004 and Twitter – 2006), so why only now bring this to our attention in this way?

It is true in life that if you drum home a message long enough and hard enough, eventually people will believe it to be true – why do you think politicians sprout sound bytes day after day?  If those concerned enough with this cause had have used this type of mantra all those years ago, would there be a need for all of this blanket coverage now?  Probably not.

The video also claims that 99% of the world’s population didn’t know who Kony was before this week, and that “no one cared”.  You don’t say?  That may have something to do with the fact that what he’s done hasn’t been in the public consciousness, and that it probably hasn’t had a need to satisfy someone’s altruistic motives until now.

There are also some very vague statements made towards the end of the video, for example, “We have reached a crucial point in history where what we do, or don’t do, right now, will affect every generation to come.”  This is nothing new, because EVERYTHING that has happened up to this point in history has somehow affected future generations in some way or another.

Another vague statement that offers pause for thought – “We are not just studying human history… we are shaping it.”  Again, this is nothing new – EVERYTHING that ANYONE has ever done, EVER, has shaped human history in some way or another.

The Internet, and social media in particular, has made these sorts of things easily accessible, easily obtainable and readily available to those who can access it and, perhaps more pertinently, want, access to it.  This is why this campaign has taken off so spectacularly.  The problem, however, is that a lot of the people who have jumped on board this campaign out there in Social Media Land are blindly following this campaign like a herd of sheep, and are ignorant of the facts of the situation, because, let’s face it, social media is the easiest way to tap into the ignorant masses.

Another issue I have with this video is that it is promoting the putting up of posters with Kony’s face in cities worldwide on April 20, which is effectively promoting vandalism on a mass scale.  I’m guessing that doing this would break many a council, state or federal law all in many places around the world, which may lead to some full police holding cells on April 21.  Don’t be surprised if you see me tearing down as many as I can in the preceding weeks.

Finally, the other thing about the video is that it is too long.  That may be to do with the fact that I’m probably a by-product of a generation where anything over two minutes doesn’t tend to hold attention spans.  However, I feel that the video would have been much more effective had it been half the length that it is.  There is a lot of ‘padding’ that really wasn’t all that necessary to the overall product.  There wasn’t really any need for Jason Russell to include his son in this video – cutting out those bits alone would probably cut down the time by about 5-6 minutes.  Then there is also the fact that the video takes about 4 ½ minutes for it to reach any semblance of what it was made for.  For a cause like this, you really need to hammer home your message into the viewer in the first 2-3 minutes for it to be a truly effective product.

Don’t get me wrong – I think this is an admirable and noble cause.  However, I have an overwhelming sense that when (if?) Kony is captured and bought to justice and all this hullaballoo dies down, that those who got their knickers in a twist about it will go back to not giving a fuck about anyone but themselves and not engage themselves in other problems around the world, e.g. the HIV/AIDS problem in Africa in general, the civil uprisings in the Middle East, and so on.  That may be what Invisible Children wants for when this goes away, I don’t know, but that haven’t exactly said if this is the case or not.  Now, I ain’t perfect – I’m not directly or indirectly involved in the betterment of those problems, but I sure as hell ain’t going to be donating my hard-earned to a corporation with questionable motives, at best.

And what happens if Kony is not arrested before December 31, 2012, the deadline the video gives?  Will we just forget about it and get back to living in ignorant bliss once more?

In summary, the ‘documentary’ has probably achieved one of its aims – to get people talking about this issue – hell, I’ve spent hours researching for and writing this blog piece.  What I don’t subscribe to is the way it’s been done.  We’ve been force fed a simplistic 30 minute video which doesn’t give all the facts, and as a result of this, Social Media Land has gone into meltdown with those looking to satisfy some form of nagging altruistic need – buy a Kony 2012 bracelet and action kit (only $30!!), soothe some guilt.

Seriously, I hope they catch the bastard soon, so we can all shut the fuck up about it.

For a more well researched piece, follow this link: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things#.T1ihgG9gGKs.twitter

Australian Senator Simon Birmingham, of the Liberal Party of Australia, had this to say in the Australian Senate this week (his argument was don’t just press retweet – do something):

“Whether it is the horrors of war and the actions of people like Joseph Kony or simple things like access to contraception or other Millennium Development Goals that look at access to clean water and the things we take for granted here in Australia, I would urge all those Australians and others around the world who have been inspired by this social media campaign to think beyond the moment where they click that mouse or retweet a link about what they can do to support the organisations who do so much work to try to make a difference in this area — what they can do to improve education and awareness beyond that moment of feeling good.”

“Hopefully, if people take up that challenge and if many of the people who have viewed the Kony video think for a little bit longer about these issues, some real good can come of it.”

For a video from a former Uganda resident, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7DO73Ese25Y

Finally, I’ll leave the final word to an Internet pundit, with a comment left on website http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/kony-2012:

“Children being abducted, enslaved, and forced into armies in Africa and across the globe is nothing new. The only reason people have even decided to take notice of this issue is because it was on their Facebook or Twitter feed. Kony, and hundreds more like him have been, are, and always will be on this planet. Once we get our noses out of our inboxes and actually educate ourselves about the world around us, maybe we’ll do something about these issues. What sickens me more than Kony is the fact that after 20 years of torture for the people of Uganda, only now do people actually begin to take notice or even care. Yes, social media is great for spreading the word about stopping and preventing these things, but people need to get educated. Watch a documentary or two, read a magazine or book, please learn about the world you are living in. Believe it or not, it is bigger than your friends’ statuses.”