Earlier today I was at work and say a link to a video entitled "Kony 2012" I clicked the link and watched for a minute or two then realized the video was 27 minutes long and there was no feasible way for me to watch it in it's entirety. Feeling that maybe this was going to be important since in the space of 5 minutes I saw it pop up two more times I googled Kony and found out who Joseph Kony is and saw what an awful person he is and learned of the evil things he was doing. I really didn't have time to throw my whole heart and soul into the plight of the child soldiers of Uganda seeing as how I had to do what I paid to do and whatnot. However it seems most of my friends had a lot more free time on their hands.
As of this posting 25 of my friends have posted the video and at least twice as many have made some kind of comment about them. In the last hour I've seen 5 different friends create groups dedicated to the plight of the Ugandans and the eventual downfall of Joseph Kony and have been asked to join two of them. I very promptly declined not because I don't care but because the events/groups were in cities that I did not live in and could not travel to on a regular basis and I would be doing a disservice to the group by joining and not participating. That being said I'm not jumping on the Kony 2012 train.
So hears the thing with these kind of campaigns. They get instanly huge crazy exposure right out of the gate, however due to the way they are delivered and the media they live in they inevitably die out since the collective population of internet has ADD and moves on quickly unless there is instant progress in whatever they are doing or if whatever it is they are working on gains more exposure. Seeing as how Kony just blew up in such a huge way it will reach it's saturation point in 2-3 days at that point some of the early learners who were drawn in but weren't really involved in the cause will get sick of seeing it so often. A day or two after that people who were so moved by what they saw and heard to join the cause after just a minute or two will suddenly find they have Jobs, and families, and things that are closer to home and much more urgent than the far away child soldiers who despite all the coverage will still be soldiers at this time next week.
Grouped in with the people who get distracted by their lives will be the Horror of the week club who will be on to the plight of someone else who is new and happening instead of the yesterday news citizens of Uganda. With those groups gone the people who got involved because their friends were into it will also leave and so the trend will continue until we see that those still fighting for the lives of child soldiers and their freedom will be the same people who were doing it before the videos went big.
It's no specific persons fault and I'm not going to belittle those who do get caught up in the whirlwind for however short a time since it is a good cause and for the most part their hearts are in the right place. The same thing goes for any similar campaign. A certain part of me wants to say don't do it unless you plan do it for the long haul but that would be wrong since you can't ask people to commit to something they don't know the second the try it. I'm sure a portion of the people posting the Kony 2012 videos will still be working for the cause next year it's just that the majority won't.
One of the main problems with these kinds of "events" is that there is no real direction just an end result. Every single group and video poster has said something about raising awareness, mission accomplished I'm aware now what? This has been a problem for the unofficial movements for ages from the post a colour and a country for cancer crowd to look at what your government is doing to your rights and freedoms groups. The few successful groups have managed to turn awareness into momentum by striking when the irons hot, but in today's instant access no wait times environment the iron will be cold in 48 hours.
If you are passionate about Kony or anything similar good for you, I hope you stick with it and accomplish all the goals involved with your movement and that you manage to stick through with it until the end. If you don't that's O.K. your not alone and if your movement dies from underneath you don't get discouraged just take what happened and learn how to ride the next wave of publicity to your goals.
UPDATE
Finally found time to watch the video, My feelings are still the same however I am glad to see it has a part two to it's plan that being said there are still some other flaws. I'm also pretty sure I'm being more sceptical towards this project than I should be but I just don't trust film-makers. I feel I may make a second post about this in roughly a weeks time.
