The Truth About Kony 2012

In just a matter of days, this video of Kony 2012 has gone viral thanks to the power of social media on the Internet.  Joseph Kony is the leader of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a group that has forced more than 60,000 children in Uganda to become foot soldiers and give their lives for a conflict they know nothing about, yet him and his group have been inactive since 2006.

Invisible Children is the nonprofit organization of filmmakers that created that video to make Kony "famous", so that people would become aware and donate to their charity, and they have been extremely successful in doing so.  However, only 31% of their donations by their own admission in 2011 actually went to the cause they aided, while the rest went to filmmaking materials.

Now, I just gave you a lot of facts and links, but what does this all mean?

Well, for starters, it shows the sway the Internet can have on people.  In the book White Noise, by Don DeLillo, one of the young characters, Heinrich, when asked a question of why he thinks a certain way or how he knows something, multiple times responds that the "radio said" so (22, 34).  This book was written in the 1980's (when people actually listened to the radio), but it captures the idea of how people can be influenced by technology--nowadays, the Internet.  People simply watch a video about how terrible this man Kony is, and they give their money without ever wondering what they're money is actually doing and how it will help; they just know they feel good that they "helped" a cause.

This brings me to another point: the feeling of donating has a huge effect on people.  People who donate always feel as if they have done something magnificent to help the world, even though they have no connection whatsoever to what they are donating to, which also relates to the book White Noise when a minor character Alfonse says, "For most people there are only two places in the world.  Where they live and their TV set" (66).  For the people who donate, they are donating to a place they only know of because they saw it on the Internet.  As long as it's not where they are, it doesn't matter to them where it is, they still get the feeling of superiority as they are helping the world.  This is also the reason why anti-Kony posts are all over Facebook and Twitter; people get the good feeling that they are helping the movement by raising awareness.

I'm not saying people who donate or try to raise awareness do not help the cause, but I think they are doing it more for their own benefit rather than the people in Uganda because they can't possibly feel as if they can connect to those children.  This is not a bad thing, as it definitely leads to more money donated, but I do think it would be even better if more people took the time to learn about the facts of the cause they're donating to and the organization they are giving their money to because I highly doubt that so many people would give their money to help some young adults make films when they could maybe do something more beneficial with it to help.