Don’t Fuck Joseph Kony
I'm thinking about going through and deleting some of my touchy friends: those armchair activist fucks. Why? Because there are so many things I want to say about that Josephy Kony video ... and I can't; at least not without a bunch of responses from people who will get upset at my towering intellect. So there's the fatuous excuse of wanting avoid anything involving a Kardashian or Justin Bieber. Of course. I wouldn't be me without saying something like that. Along that same line, this douchebag has the gall to call himself a filmmaker?
But let's dig a little deeper here: Are all of these people (we're up to 38 Facebook shares as of this writing) going to sit there and tell me that something like this:
... would have sparked a revolution on Facebook? Even though if you read the Wikipedia entry it's pretty goddamned clear he's not a good man. NO! If I'd posted that when I found out about Kony it #1 would have been on MySpace and #2 have been met by dead internets silence. Why?
Because it's not relatable. It's not tangible.
Feeble American brains, soft and underused from all of their Next Top Model, Cupcake ATMs, and the Party Rock Anthem don't react in any way to a big block of text unless, ironically, it's about something completely useless - see the Rush Limbaugh debacle or the furor surrounding Congress passing a bill that adds a word to a section of US law. So how can we dress it up and give it a spray tan for American consumption?
I've got it! Let's have this self-righteous dick dreamer parade his kid around to get them all ready, then spend 30 fucking minutes telling them about this person who was affected by Kony's atrocities! We'll do it with flashy graphics, poorly edited footage, dramatic music, and McDouchenstein's languid drone over the top of it. Americans love it when you appeal to their desire to make the world a better place for their kids!
Let's gloss over the fact that only somewhere between 30-35% of the money our organization received actually went to Uganda. Or that there are so few LRA members left, and that Kony hasn't been active for six years. Let's also skip past the fact that what we're taking all that time to explain is really, at most, two or three sentences. [For reference: Joseph Kony is the leader of an extremist Christian group called the Lord's Resistance Army, based out of Uganda. He is known for committing terrible atrocities against innocent civilians - especially children - in the name of the Christian God. Though many attempts have been made to capture him, he remains free to this day, his current whereabouts unknown.]
This is why slacktivism is so popular: you can film some guy who lost his legs, overlay some inspirational music, post it on YouTube, and you are SOLID GOLD. Your video will be viral, and will have brought asinine Americans to tears. They'll claim it changed their lives ... and promptly forget about it two weeks later.
What's really going on is that Obama's already on top of this shit. Just like he got Osama, he's gonna fucking get this guy. Yeah, it sucks that he's basically been on the run since being pushed out of Uganda in 2005/6 (he may be deathly ill, according to some reports). It sucks he had armies of children, and traded girls away to assholes. He's a shitty, shitty human being. But you're still all assholes.
I'm going to go find myself a dog that lost its legs to record and overlay with some sad music for idiots to spread around. Shit - someone already beat me to that?