As soon as I saw my Facebook news feed blow up from people liking the Kony video oh, about a month ago, I thought to myself, "oh jeez this is something that people are just freaking out about, thinking they can save the world with a click". I progressively saw this more and more and was hearing about it in the news, so I prepared myself to watch this 30 minute video to see what all the hype was about. As soon as I watched it, I had quite a few doubts, but what I doubted even more was why so many people were passively supportive of the cause. I say passively supportive because I saw so many people liking and sharing the video. But, I asked a few people if they did anything else about it, and the majority of people said no. Do they really think that sharing the page is going to do anything? And these were from people who seemed genuinely passionate about the cause, but only shared the page. Raising awareness by sharing the video to me is a passive form of support, and also what about 95 percent of the likers of the YouTube video did.
I do give props to the guy who made the video, though. I mean Jason Russell does have a very convincing voice and the video complete with images is very selling. Supporters believe what everything is being said because it seems so believable and moving. Of course people do not want to see young children starving and/or being tortured. This video really speaks to the pathos and people's emotions. Viewers were feeling bad for these children and that's exactly what the video wanted to do. Also, I think the concept of "self objects" comes in to play here a lot. As stated in Robin's article, "So it seems natural and human for us to seek those things and people that serve to mirror back and support our image of coherent selves" (229). The supporters are in complete support of the video because they have cared about humanitarian efforts before, so the video speaks out to them, and they believe it.
Unfortunately for the supporters, this video received nothing but flak shortly after it raised its peak of positive awareness. They realized the true story about the funds and how donations were dispersed, and pretty much all the negative aspects of Invisible Children. So I'm not saying that everything with the Kony video is BS, but I kind of am. Good idea (in theory), terrible execution.
I think this is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdldABYWHEY but I couldn't find the "official" video
The Kony 2012 video was a lot of ridiculousness happening in a really REALLY short period of time. I will always stand by my high school affinity for IC though because the intention was there, the group DOES help in SOME ways, and, most importantly, people are educated about a world issue because of IC. Though, is there a better way to educate people?
ReplyDelete...Yes.
That said, I totally agree that the video BLEW UP over night because of the whole "identity" thing. It was cool to like that video because it's cool to be humanity orientated and feel like it's you and a million other people fighting against the world's cruelties... instead of just you and... you. The video played to people's 1) short attention spans by employing really cool looking graphics and 2) people's need to be a part of a group- to have a group identity... to quote Robin's article, there was a "group rhetoric" used in that video and that's why it thrived.