On March 4, 2012, Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children, was virtually unknown. Within days his video Kony 2012 had over 50 million views and he, literally overnight, became a household name. On March 16 he was taken into custody by police after complaints that he was naked through the streets, screaming, and making crude gestures in what appeared to be some kind of nervous breakdown.
With the recent popularity growth of the internet and social media, we often here concerns about how this trend effects our privacy. What we don't hear about as often is the dangers that come with its incredible power of exposure. Here is a case of someone who appeared to have good intentions, whether or not they were misguided, who became extremely famous almost instantaneously through social media and appears to have been unable to cope with the exposure and resulting backlash.
On March 5, 2012, a 30 minute video was released by a non-profit organization named Invisible Children Inc. The video was entitled Kony 2012, and its goal was to bring awareness to the atrocities of the LRA in Uganda, and its leader Joseph Kony. The video currently has over 85 million views on Youtube, and Invisible children has over 3 million facebook "likes", and over 400,000 twitte followers. It was also a top 5 trending topic on twitter for over a week after its release. One of the results of the videos incredible popularity was a senate resolution being made condemning Kony and promising further support for Uganda.
Several high profile journalists such as Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper had recently done stories on Kony through traditional news outlets, and yet the public remained largely unaware of the issue. Somehow this video resonated with people, and spread through social media such as facebook and twitter like wildfire.
Perhaps even more interesting than the meteoric rise of Jason Russell's and the video's popularity, was the almost absurdly vehement backlash that followed. Many felt the video's message was far too simplistic, and focused more on a 5 year old american boy than the suffering of the people of Uganda, but the criticisms went far beyond that, some going as far as to denounce Invisible Children as a fraudulent charity with nefarious intentions. After his public episode, Russel's wife stated to the press that he was having difficulty dealing with the negative feedback from the video, and that this was atleast partly responsible for his public breakdown. A second video, which begins with the cries of suffering Ugandans and then quickly tranforms into an expensive looking musical featuring Russel and his friends, only fueled the criticism, and the video was quickly removed from their website.
Their have been many examples of people's lives being effected negatively by viral videos, such as the infamous "Star Wars Kid", but none of those videos seemed this benign, or spread so far and so quickly, with such immediate obvious effects. We all need to consider the implications of this new media's incredible power to shine a spotlight on people suddenly, whether or not they want it or are ready for it.
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