Today I turned on my facebook to my find my homepage awash with a viral video entitled “Kony 2012”. A viral video set up by the charity Invisible Children. Telling the heartbreaing plight of child soldiers and child sex slaves in Uganda under the LRA. Every video there were numerous shares, people asking others to give up half an hour of their time to see what this video was about.
Less than half an hour later, a new topic was trending. One called Visible Children. A blog that appeared to be set up by a single person condemning the Invisible Children movement. Begging people not to get involved, and telling them it was a pointless waste of time, social media and their hard earned cash.
I think we live in a very sad world where anyones attempts to try and make the world a better place is immediatley met with cycncism and ridicule. There are a few people out there genuinely trying to make a difference and sadly, in the world we know live in, there are far too many cries for help that go unheard. What about our afghanistan troops, what about other dictators, what about extremists, what about the starving children, what about orphans, sex slaves, cancer suffers, the homeless… the list is endless.
Although you may not want to give away your money to Kony 2012, you may be unsure of where your money is going, you may not fully understand the cause, that’s fine but where is the harm in supporting a cause if you don’t want to see young boys become child soldiers and young girls sold on as sex slaves.
People moan that facebook, twitter, tumblr and other forms of social media do nothing to help the cause but let me ask you - before today did you know anything about the regime in Uganda? Did you care? I think that the power of social media is incredible and we should harness that. Yes, alright no one is going topple the regime sitting at a laptop in their bedroom, but its a start.
People are now talking about it, sharing their views, soon the papers will get involved, more people will blog about it, create youtube videos about, change their status updates and all because one organization made a video. We can show the world that we care about injustice and even if we can’t personally help, we can start making waves so the more powerful can do so on our behalf.
