It's starting to trend on Twitter and I've seen a few shares on Facebook already.
Edit: here's a video that summarises the whole escapade fairly well I feel:
[video=youtube;kO_tSVSg0qc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO_tSVSg0qc&feature=g-u-u&context=G288ca03FUAAAAAAACAA[/video]
Venting about this here because I don't care about backlash here.
Where the hell has everyone been? I mean seriously? It takes one well-coordinated global viral campaign to turn this into a fad and get everyone to actually give a pomegranate?
These atrocities, this human rights horror that is the Invisible Children - this is all nothing new. This has been an issue in Uganda for over a decade, something widely discussed year in and year out by the media and human rights organizations. Why the hell are people just figuring out about this now?
Ultimately I'm glad to see a global outpouring of support, both financially and in raising awareness, but I fear many are hopping on the bandwagon because it's become a fad. "OMG RIHANNA TWEETED TO VISIT INVISIBLECHILDREN.COM I'VE GOTTA GO THERE! #KONY2012 EVERYONE LET'S SAVE THE WORLD!"
No. You're not saving the world, you're solving a major political issue that has plagued central region of the African continent for a decade. That's wonderful, but your help would have been a lot more useful years ago.
/rant
Watch something like this happen for climate change in 2020 when Indonesia goes underwater via rising sea levels. Once again, would have been useful 40 years earlier.
FrozNlite Wrote:Why the hell are people just figuring out about this now?
I find it hard to belive that people don't know about this type of things but it seems to be true, hell you don't have to know exactly what is going on there to know that half Africa is overrun by this type of people and what do the goverments do? Throw some food from an airplane and hope for the best.
Youtube does not update views. It has over double the viewcount in likes.
And yeah, people have known about this for years, but without something like this, apathy will overcome any motivation. At the end of the day, who cares what some spoiled kids hopping on a bandwagon think, as long as it gets the job done.
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FrozNlite Wrote:Venting about this here because I don't care about backlash here.
Where the hell has everyone been? I mean seriously? It takes one well-coordinated global viral campaign to turn this into a fad and get everyone to actually give a pomegranate?
These atrocities, this human rights horror that is the Invisible Children - this is all nothing new. This has been an issue in Uganda for over a decade, something widely discussed year in and year out by the media and human rights organizations. Why the hell are people just figuring out about this now?
Ultimately I'm glad to see a global outpouring of support, both financially and in raising awareness, but I fear many are hopping on the bandwagon because it's become a fad. "OMG RIHANNA TWEETED TO VISIT INVISIBLECHILDREN.COM I'VE GOTTA GO THERE! #KONY2012 EVERYONE LET'S SAVE THE WORLD!"
No. You're not saving the world, you're solving a major political issue that has plagued central region of the African continent for a decade. That's wonderful, but your help would have been a lot more useful years ago.
/rant
Watch something like this happen for climate change in 2020 when Indonesia goes underwater via rising sea levels. Once again, would have been useful 40 years earlier.
People just don't get it.
Why do you think this wasn't known before now?
This isn't anything new, sure, and neither are other atrocities taking place around the world. We can't all know what happens in every inch of this planet at all times. What you should care about is that the word is actually out now rather than assume it's just a ''fad''. We can't know about things that don't exist to us. I didn't know about this until yesterday, personally, so does that make me a bad person? Of course not as I had no way of knowing these things were even happening as they were never spoken of for me to hear. Same goes for many others.
What were YOU doing all this time if you knew about this already? Were you spreading the word long before this? In the position you're in there is no way for us to know whether you were or not, but I ask so that you can ask yourself.
案山子 Wrote:Why do you think this wasn't known before now?
This isn't anything new, sure, and neither are other atrocities taking place around the world. We can't all know what happens in every inch of this planet at all times. What you should care about is that the word is actually out now rather than assume it's just a ''fad''. We can't know about things that don't exist to us. I didn't know about this until yesterday, personally, so does that make me a bad person? Of course not as I had no way of knowing these things were even happening as they were never spoken of for me to hear. Same goes for many others.
What were YOU doing all this time if you knew about this already? Were you spreading the word long before this? In the position you're in there is no way for us to know whether you were or not, but I ask so that you can ask yourself.
Didn't watch the video yet, but I did see TotalBiscuit post about it in facebook saying its a load of crap
Spoiler
As with pretty much every cause, people think that activism involves "shout at someone with a bigger platform than you over Twitter until they mindlessly bleet what you've said in order to shut you up". It is a fairly bad way of raising awareness and it is definitely not good activism. This time around it's all KONY 2012, a flashy, very expensively made documentary film by the charity Invisible Children. Many of my viewers have jumped on the bandwagon, with good intentions no doubt but let's remember, that's what the road to hell is paved with. More disturbing is the fact that a critical analysis of this charity and it's video has been BLOCKED from Youtube. As in, you can't post the link, at all. Something does not smell right. As a result of not being able to link this blog, I am reposting it word for word here, along with all of it's sources and evidence. Please do not waste your time and mine pestering me to promote KONY 2012 and do use your brain before mindlessly accepting everything in that film as fact.
"I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, Im strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.
KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. Theyve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I dont think thats a good thing, and Im not alone.
Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they havent had their finances externally audited.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money funds the Ugandan governments army and various other military forces. Heres a photo
of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan Peoples Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting,
but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasnt been since 2006 by their own admission.
Still, the bulk of Invisible Childrens spending isnt on funding African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRAs use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony a brutal man, to be sure as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil. Hes certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.
As Christ Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of ICs programming, Theres also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. [ ] It hints uncomfortably of the White Mans Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.
Still, Konys a bad guy, and hes been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And theyve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many childrens deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably dont realize theyre supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel its the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I dont think most people are in that position, and thats a problem.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, arent of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isnt helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I dont, but that doesnt mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because its something. Something isnt always better than nothing. Sometimes its worse.
If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Konys crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But lets keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.
Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr[dot]com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012."
I'd just like to repost Cynical Brit's facebook post about this:
Spoiler
As with pretty much every cause, people think that activism involves "shout at someone with a bigger platform than you over Twitter until they mindlessly bleet what you've said in order to shut you up". It is a fairly bad way of raising awareness and it is definitely not good activism. This time around it's all KONY 2012, a flashy, very expensively made documentary film by the charity Invisible Children. Many of my viewers have jumped on the bandwagon, with good intentions no doubt but let's remember, that's what the road to hell is paved with. More disturbing is the fact that a critical analysis of this charity and it's video has been BLOCKED from Youtube. As in, you can't post the link, at all. Something does not smell right. As a result of not being able to link this blog, I am reposting it word for word here, along with all of it's sources and evidence. Please do not waste your time and mine pestering me to promote KONY 2012 and do use your brain before mindlessly accepting everything in that film as fact.
"I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, Im strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.
KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. Theyve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I dont think thats a good thing, and Im not alone.
Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they havent had their finances externally audited.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money funds the Ugandan governments army and various other military forces. Heres a photo
of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan Peoples Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting,
but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasnt been since 2006 by their own admission.
Still, the bulk of Invisible Childrens spending isnt on funding African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRAs use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony a brutal man, to be sure as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil. Hes certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.
As Christ Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of ICs programming, Theres also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. [ ] It hints uncomfortably of the White Mans Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.
Still, Konys a bad guy, and hes been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And theyve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many childrens deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.
Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably dont realize theyre supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel its the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I dont think most people are in that position, and thats a problem.
Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, arent of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isnt helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I dont, but that doesnt mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because its something. Something isnt always better than nothing. Sometimes its worse.
If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Konys crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But lets keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.
Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr[dot]com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012."
pineapple you Rusty posting it a minute before I did.
Wasn't this tried last year? Invisible children sound's familiar.
Edit: Yeah this BS, man why the fk are we so concerned about other countries when we can't maintain our own. We're not the superhero's in the world, let's stop pretending.
Fucking hipsters and bandwagoners. The US already IS involved, we've got a small military presence there as advisors. This isn't like the Haiti earthquake, where the general public could actually do some good by donating $5.00 via their phone bills, etc - He's a criminal and needs to be dealt with by Ugandan law enforcement/military for there to be any legitimacy in how it's handled. The issue has been ongoing for years, you're not on the cutting edge of human rights activism because you're retweeting the same damned thing everyone else is.
Seanny Wrote:I find those who make an effort to educate people's good intentions much more useful than just condemning them. That's all I have to say.
[COLOR="#cc8899"]Pardon me if I take offense at people making a fad out of a serious problem, especially one that some of my fellow servicemembers are actively involved in correcting. Slogans and posters don't do anything but irritate people - you're more likely to make a problem be taken LESS seriously by trying to make a campaign/protest out of it (re: Occupy Wallstreet).
See: growing backlash from people sick of seeing this all over social networks/forum sites.[/COLOR]
