Remember back in 2012 when everyone on social media became passionate activists in the 20 minutes it took to watch Invisible Children's Kony video? This campaign received a huge reaction from the public. Now the campaign itself was very questionable, along with the practices of Invisible Children. What I'm interested in is how it just seemed to go away overnight. One of the campaign's few slogans is seen below. "Stop at Nothing." Clearly this was untrue as the campaign came to a very abrupt stop.
http://lacigreen.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/kony.jpg&imgrefur
So, what ever happened to the campaign?
The first thing that happened was a small amount of people decided to actually educate themselves on this topic. It takes a very minimal amount of background research in to Uganda to realize the problems with the campaign. What Invisible Children had called for was the capture of warlord Joseph Kony, even though he was no longer the problem at hand. Kony had been pushed out of the country long before. The more immediate problem was recovering former child soldiers, and reintegrating these youth back into communities.
I personally have had a chance to travel to Uganda and know first hand that it is not a place where children are running around with machine guns and machetes killing one another. What it is is a country that has been damaged both physically and emotionally through the citizens by the war. The campaign did not focus on relevant problems so people became very skeptical and less likely to support this campaign.
Another thing that happened was exposure to the flaws in Invisible Children. They have a huge amount of money that was not going to there programs.
For example the salary of the co-founder/film maker Jason Russell is $113,180.00 (source http://www.charitynavigator.org). I don't understand why this guy needs a 6 digit salary, especially if he is spending a significant of time in the country actually working towards the goals of his charity. Uganda is an extremely cheap place to live.
The last thing that really brought this campaign to an end was the nude public meltdown of Jason Russell.
This guy is the co founder and film maker as mentioned earlier. He directed the Kony 2012 video that brought this campaign to internet fame.
Just 10 days after he released the video, a fully naked and screaming Russell had to be held down at a San Diego intersection until police arrived to take care of him.
The whole event was also caught on camera. I'm not going to put that video on here as I already had one naked guy in my first post, but I'm sure if its something you wanted to see you could find it.
Russell did attempt to justify his actions saying "my mind betrayed me and I was hospitalized. If you're put in the position to give answers to every question a dozen times over, your mind starts to lose track of where you are, if you've slept, who's for you, who's against you."
It's a pretty lame excuse. I have definitely answered questions more than a dozen times and am yet to make love to a city street.
In conclusion this campaign disappeared because of illegitimacy and unprofessional behaviour.
Uganda does still need a lot of help, so if it is an issue that concerns you there are many ways to help that don't include paying the naked guys salary.
So, what ever happened to the campaign?
The first thing that happened was a small amount of people decided to actually educate themselves on this topic. It takes a very minimal amount of background research in to Uganda to realize the problems with the campaign. What Invisible Children had called for was the capture of warlord Joseph Kony, even though he was no longer the problem at hand. Kony had been pushed out of the country long before. The more immediate problem was recovering former child soldiers, and reintegrating these youth back into communities.
I personally have had a chance to travel to Uganda and know first hand that it is not a place where children are running around with machine guns and machetes killing one another. What it is is a country that has been damaged both physically and emotionally through the citizens by the war. The campaign did not focus on relevant problems so people became very skeptical and less likely to support this campaign.
Another thing that happened was exposure to the flaws in Invisible Children. They have a huge amount of money that was not going to there programs.
For example the salary of the co-founder/film maker Jason Russell is $113,180.00 (source http://www.charitynavigator.org). I don't understand why this guy needs a 6 digit salary, especially if he is spending a significant of time in the country actually working towards the goals of his charity. Uganda is an extremely cheap place to live.
The last thing that really brought this campaign to an end was the nude public meltdown of Jason Russell.
This guy is the co founder and film maker as mentioned earlier. He directed the Kony 2012 video that brought this campaign to internet fame.
Just 10 days after he released the video, a fully naked and screaming Russell had to be held down at a San Diego intersection until police arrived to take care of him.
The whole event was also caught on camera. I'm not going to put that video on here as I already had one naked guy in my first post, but I'm sure if its something you wanted to see you could find it.
Russell did attempt to justify his actions saying "my mind betrayed me and I was hospitalized. If you're put in the position to give answers to every question a dozen times over, your mind starts to lose track of where you are, if you've slept, who's for you, who's against you."
It's a pretty lame excuse. I have definitely answered questions more than a dozen times and am yet to make love to a city street.
In conclusion this campaign disappeared because of illegitimacy and unprofessional behaviour.
Uganda does still need a lot of help, so if it is an issue that concerns you there are many ways to help that don't include paying the naked guys salary.
Wow, I was curious on how the whole Kony issue just went away over night, but thankyou for that information. I had no idea, that's crazy. If I can do anything I would really like to, in outreach I learned information slightly on Uganda, but since you have actually gone and experienced what it is like I'm sure you know a lot more. Excellent post.
ReplyDeleteWow this guy is certified crazy! I had heard that this campaign was wack but I had no idea that it was this misleading. This was basically a full out scam. So sad when people/ organizations play off of people's fear and even worse, their support. :(
ReplyDeleteThis is insane, I was unsure about what actually happened, but what he did was pretty awful.
ReplyDelete