By Emma Trapp
Round table marketing director
With its simplistic message and controversial interviews, the Kony 2012 YouTube video, created by The Invisible Children Organization, has been viewed by over 100 million people, and that number continues to rise.
Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord of his Lords Renaissance Army, has been kidnapping children; forcing them to commit murder, training them to be in his army and turning the girls into sex slaves.
With the help of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the director of the video, Jason Russell, was able to make his video more famous than anyone could have predicted, and in such a short time span.
The idea was to make Kony famous in order to assist the efforts to bring about his capture and downfall. Russell has openly admitted to wanting the video to be a controversial and simplistic view on a topic that is really a much more complicated situation.
Russell said that with its simplicity, the video would be able to reach more viewers and help a younger generation understand what is going on in Uganda.
Now that The Invisible Children has successfully made the video and situation known, there is no doubt that the idea of simplicity helped make the video become famous; but with its popularity, the attention has turned to The Invisible Children Organization rather than focusing on the capture of Kony himself.
Yes, the general idea of having a more simplistic video was a good idea in theory, as it led to a younger generation spreading the word, but with that idea there has been much controversy of what was left out of the video.
Many people think that with the popularity of the video, the wrong message is being spread that Uganda is not doing anything about the current situation, and that the creators of the video had failed to address the action that Uganda had taken.
Many argue that this is not the only problem that is occurring in Uganda and that it is not the number one priority. Some perceive that the video is demonstrating “the white man’s burden” and, yet again, having to come to the rescue.
What the video failed to bring to light was what Uganda did for itself. The Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi, recently released a video stating that he agreed that Kony is a “truly an evil criminal,” but the situation is under control and The Invisible Children’s video is misleading.
The simplicity of the video did what it was intended to do: get the people’s attention; but after the shock effect fled, it was opened up to criticism which The Invisible Children were clearly not prepared to face.
Director and narrator, Jason Russell, was faced with what he says was “extreme pressure, and stress.” This is the reasoning behind what many are refereeing to Russell’s “mental break-down.”
Approximately a month after the Kony video took off on the internet, Russell was arrested for public nudity, among other inappropriate actions. With the recent development of Russell having been admitted to a mental ward, no one is paying as much attention to the capture of Kony.
The simplicity of the Kony 2012 video helped spread the video to millions of viewers, with the targeted age group of young adults.
The goal was to get a younger generation to take action in a serious issue, but how should the public take action when the video creator and director is busy having a mental break down after his goal was reached?
What The Invisible Children group was not prepared for was what was going to come after the video went viral. It is no question that the video was effective in catching the attention of America’s youth; but with the accessibility of the internet, can the ability to circulate information so easily, faulty or not, bring about more harm than help?
