Everyone has seen the video and there is no way anyone could have missed the millions of posts on facebook and other social networks. It was a massive explosion across all media networks. The news covered it, The Project covered it and even mums knew about it. If you type "kony" into google it will give you over 22 million results. The word was out and then it was all over almost as fast as it began.
People stopped posting statuses that supported the Make Kony Famous project and starting critising it and then it all disappeared into a distant memory. So although the video may have caught the attention of millions all around the world, did it work? No other subject has taken advantage of this new technological age and spread so far so quickly. But did this porject rely too heavily on facebook? News of Kony travelled so fast that a few days after it hit, people were already thinking it was old news. People who were late to pick up and posted the video a few days later received comments suggesting they had missed the entire thing. But its not over. The video talks of the April the 20th. So will people still care that far in the future. More than a month after the initial boom in the media, will Kony still have the power to effect the world. Will people still care enough to act?
Do we have any power to effect the world the way the video inspires you to believe? What does this mean for the future? What does this type of attention to a topic like this show? Could this affect the way we see news and could it be used to our advantage?
The video states that is was only made to create attention to the subject of Kony and to make people aware of the events in Uganda with child soldiers. If you look at the video in this light then the video was a major success. It was even bigger than a major success. The attention it received was bigger than anything we have ever seen. But will it do anything to help the children in Uganda whose lives are in danger? That, we can't be too certain about. The Australian government has stated that there isn't much a whole lot that it can do. America has sent in troops already but could this escalate into another Vietnam War situation? Time and time again we see America (and its allies) sticking its head into problems all over the world. At heart they might be trying to help but has this type of action ever done any good. If Uganda is already working to try to locate and stop Kony and people like him, this video is almost like a call to war. War, as we have seen over and over throughout history, is not the way to solve problems.
We see all the people who believe that this video is out right crap and that ordinary people sitting on their computers in their safe homes cant do a thing. But negative attention is still attention and that is what the video was aiming for. All it wanted was attention.
...So now we wait for April 20th...
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