It’s kind of a complicated problem, and something I’m personally a bit torn on.
One one hand, I hate a few aspects of that video. It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when you get a video like that that encourages you to “raise awareness”, as I feel that by nature “raising awareness” is sort of bullshit. Before you all jump on me about that, though, let me explain myself.
I am all for taking down Kony. I am all for more people knowing about the cause. I am all for what Invisible Children is trying to do. But really? Encouraging people to hashtag #kony2012? Changing your tumblr background? Fuck that. That’s not “raising awareness”, it’s slacktivism. I see a lot of people who have watched the video, and have now started hashtagging things #kony2012, changing their tumblr avatar to fit the anti-Kony stuff, and then getting on people’s case when they call them out for not really doing anything. That’s not helping, it’s merely bandwagoning onto a cause to karmically balance yourself and make you feel like you’re doing something. Slacktivism. If you want to do something, write a letter to congress. Talk to people face-to-face. Donate money! But get down from your high horse and don’t tell me that you’re helping because you put #kony2012 on everything.
But then that leads to the donate money comment. I think that’s really where most of this is going to play out, but like @WestRiverrat said, there are far better places to put your money than Invisible Children. They’ve said themselves that “about 20 percent [of their budget] goes to salaries and overhead, and the remaining 43 percent goes to our awareness programs”. That leaves a whopping 37 percent that’s actually going to the cause they so strongly preach in their heavy-handed videos.
So call me cynical, but I call that a scam. People are donating to them thinking their money is going towards helping take down Joseph Kony, but in reality, 20% of their 15 dollar donation is going right to Jason Russell and co.‘s pockets, and the other 40% is going towards making more videos like the one we watched.
I hate holding a stance like this, because it makes me seem really unreasonable and anti-change. I’m not pro-child soldier, but I think the way Invisible Children has exploited all of this is really, really sad.
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