Kony Kraze: Not Actually Helping, or Am I Just a Cynic?

By now, anyone even remotely connected to a social network has seen the KONY 2012 video. (If not, take some time and watch it now; that way you won't be out of the loop for the rest of this article, man.) It was produced by a non-profit named Invisible Children to spread news about a man named Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel force). Specifically, it was produced to spread news about the horrible things he's done to Ugandan children, the list including kidnapping, rape, forced servitude, and conscription (making kids be soldiers) and hopefully bring about his arrest. The purpose of this campaign, "to make Kony famous," certainly worked: everybody's talking about him now, whether they like it or not. He is this year's "Friday", with an extra dose of hatred. But does all that talk necessarily mean good things for the campaign and, more importantly, for the Ugandans it is supposed to help? Or is it beneficial in name only?
I will agree, maybe this isn't the best topic for a humor website to be covering. Unlike our usual fare of dick jokes and CAPS LOCK rants, the tragic state of human rights in East Africa is no laughing matter. But I think we owe it to our readers to cover such an important and popular topic and to provide some clarification and opinion on it.




This Foreign Policy article (a must-read for anyone wanting more in-depth discussion of this campaign) by a man who used to be a reporter in Uganda shows, there are a lot of holes in Invisible Children's video. For example Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) aren't even in the area of Uganda that the video focuses on, or even in Uganda at all: they're in nearby countries like South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition, the non-profit has faced criticism about the way they spend their donations. But I'm not here to judge how they spend their money; I'll leave that up for you to decide. I'm here to talk about the effects of this video and its subsequent drive to make Kony "more famous than George Clooney."
This video is one of the first social media campaigns to really go viral, and the speed at which this crossed the interwebs is a strong reminder of just how connected everybody is today. Personally, I have seen this video appear at least ten times in my news feed on Facebook, and many hashtags about Kony have passed through my Twitter feed as well. I mean, big names have jumped on the Kony boat, too: P. Diddy, Oprah, and Justin Bieber, to name a few memorable ones. I think it's good for all these people -- especially teenagers, notorious for being unwilling to involve themselves in anything -- to have a cause to band behind and make them think about their role in the world. I'm glad that many of my friends view themselves as budding activists who might want to actually make a difference in the world. However, what worries me is that a lot of my peers are only superficially caring about this issue.
Sure, they're sharing the video with their friends, they're posting long-winded, grammatically incorrect tirades about why everybody "must watch" it, maybe they're even buying those KONY 2012 bracelets. But they're not sharing for the charity factor: they're sharing for the sake of sharing. They're sharing because it allows them to check off their good deed for the day without much effort. On the surface it looks like they care a lot, even if they really don't, and that translates into a lot of community brownie points. It allows them to feel good about their actions, even if reposting a video is really meaningless.
Call me a pessimist, but I bet most people simply watch and share the video, then forget all about it. No follow-up search for ways to actually help, no telling anyone in real life, nothing. And it's not even their fault, because this campaign isn't driving for action per se: its goal is simply "awareness," though I doubt Invisible Children would mind if some sort of action arose out of the awareness made. Nobody said they had to care about it, and no one is forcing them to. But the whole thing just feels very empty and forced when people half-ass their caring in this way.
To be fair, there's not very much we can do, short of purchasing a mercenary force to send in there, that will directly affect the situation. That should be made clear to anyone who tries to contribute to the campaign, because sadly the majority's perspective seems to be "oh, if I buy a wristband or a poster and tell all my friends to watch this video, he's going to be instantly captured and all the kids will be fine and the country will automatically be peaceful, with unicorns and rainbows and – oh look! Farmville!". Okay, so I exaggerate a little. But a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that raising awareness for this cause directly translates into some sort of effect on the situation. News flash: it doesn't work like that. Cynical as it sounds, their sharing a video or purchasing a poster will have no clear-cut impact on the hunt for Kony.
It just boosts Invisible Children's efforts to speed up the hunt for Kony.
Invisible Children does, however, think that if this becomes popular enough it can influence the American army, through American citizens, into staying in Uganda longer and increasing their efforts to hunt down Kony, in conjunction with the Ugandan military. Is this really good? Do we want the American public to have the ability to affect the army or White House's decisions? Personally I think we should leave the military action to the people who, you know, studied and trained for military situations, instead of the huddling and semi-washed masses who, you know, don't do army things. If the people are able to push the federal government into changing its course of action, it could set a dangerous precedent for future conflicts. That would mean, with the right amount of well-placed propaganda, you could get America to finally take over Canada, and that would not end well. We simply don't have the space for all that hockey. All jokes aside, though, if what Invisible Children is proposing works, the long term effects may not be as worthwhile as one might hope.
Ironically (not the funny, karmic kind of irony; this is the sad, unfortunate, shit-that's-the-opposite-of-what-we-were-trying-for kind of irony) the drive to raise support for his capture may just make it harder to catch Kony. See, as the video says, long before this video made the Facebookian rounds, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Kony's arrest, to bring him accountable for his war crimes, but they have been having troubles catching him. President Obama even sent troops to the region of African continent Kony's currently covertly cavorting around to aid the Ugandan military in their search for said war criminal. But now that Kony knows everybody and their grandmother wants his head, he's probably going to make sure he's a little harder to find and capture. Redoubled search efforts mean redoubled hiding efforts. Hopefully that won't happen, but it's still a possible negative side effect to bear in mind.

Hipster Obama: Going after Kony before it was cool.

Obviously I support anything that aims to bring Kony to justice: the crimes he has committed are horrific, and he needs to be stopped before he can harm the region any further. In a sense that is what Invisible Children was trying to do, but they have broadly simplified the problem. And in simplifying it they distorted -- accidentally, but distorted nonetheless -- the purpose of their crusade. They have good intentions, and I commend them for bringing a faraway issue to people who normally wouldn't care about it. I just don't think their current plan of action is the best way to accomplish their goal.