{"id":23839,"date":"2012-04-24T19:22:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T19:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/theatlantic-how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T22:03:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T05:03:43","slug":"theatlantic-how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/theatlantic-how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-23839 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/theatlantic-how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled\/attachment\/23840\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_m2zr5ye55H1qcokc4o1_640-100x100.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/theatlantic.tumblr.com\/post\/21718326545\/how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled-out-last\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">theatlantic<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2012\/04\/how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled-out\/256261\/\">How Kony 2012\u2019s Big Event Fizzled Out<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Last Saturday morning,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2012\/04\/kony-2012-night-arrives-at-last\/256149\/\">the world was supposed to wake up<\/a>\u00a0to city centers plastered with bright red posters telling us to STOP AT NOTHING. Cities and towns were supposed to be covered with the messages of peace and common cause that made themselves known through youth who came out to \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seattlepi.com\/local\/article\/Kony-2012-s-Cover-the-Night-continues-despite-3499509.php\">Cover the Night<\/a>.\u201d The end game of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc\">Kony 2012 video<\/a> \u2014 the most successful viral video campaign\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mashable.com\/2012\/03\/12\/kony-most-viral\/\">of all time<\/a> \u2014 was supposed to be a physical world awash with the graffiti of digital empathy.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2012\/apr\/21\/kony-2012-campaign-uganda-warlord\">consensus<\/a>, though? The thing was a flop. Hardly anyone came out.<\/p>\n<p>But why Cover the Night was a flop is, actually, interesting. The hyped event\u2019s meager turnout could have a number of causes: our fleeting digital attention spans, or viral content\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/15\/sunday-review\/the-news-cycle-from-fireworks-to-fizzle.html?pagewanted=all\">fireworks-to-fizzle<\/a>\u00a0trajectories, or the challenges of translating online activism to real-world change, or Invisible Children\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/anthonykosner\/2012\/04\/21\/the-lonely-kony-poster-and-the-importance-of-the-pivot\/\">failure to capitalize on the attention it had once it still had it<\/a>, or Invisible Children\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sandiego6.com\/news\/local\/Konys-Cover-the-Night-2012-148219535.html\">own pivot<\/a>\u00a0when it came to the stated goal of the event, or the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2012\/03\/why-we-should-take-heart-from-the-backlash-against-kony2012\/254231\/\">widespread backlash<\/a>that brought phrases like \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2012\/03\/the-white-savior-industrial-complex\/254843\/\">the white savior industrial complex<\/a>\u201d newly, and powerfully, into the mass consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>There are, in short, PhD dissertations to be written about the Kony campaign and the way it exploded and, at least for the moment, faded. In the meantime, though, there\u2019s one more thing worth highlighting: the branding the campaign took on, almost \u2014 almost \u2014 in spite of itself. Invisible Children\u2019s campaign became not just about Kony, and not even just about Invisible Children, but about the guy ultimately informing us of Kony\u2019s evildoing:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jason_Russell\">Jason Russell<\/a>, the Invisible Children co-founder. Partly, of course, things got personal because the video made them personal: \u201cKony 2012\u201d starred not only Kony himself, and not only Jacob, one of the Ugandan children affected by the warlord\u2019s tactics, but also \u2014 famously, infamously \u2014 Jason Russell and his son. The video forced viewers to see Kony\u2019s story as an extension of Jason Russell\u2019s story, and of Jason Russell\u2019s organization\u2019s story, and of Jason Russell\u2019s kid\u2019s story. That was supposed to be what made the thing \u201crelatable.\u201d That was its power and its pitfall.<\/p>\n<p>But it also meant that the campaign\u2019s fortunes were connected to the person \u2014 which is to say, the persona \u2014 of Russell himself. When he fell,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/03\/21\/jason-russell-reactive-psychosis-kony-2012_n_1370099.html\">publicly and embarrassingly<\/a>, the campaign fell, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2012\/04\/how-kony-2012s-big-event-fizzled-out\/256261\/\">Read more.<\/a><\/strong> <em>[Image: Kony2012]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>theatlantic: How Kony 2012\u2019s Big Event Fizzled Out Last Saturday morning,\u00a0the world was supposed to wake up\u00a0to city centers plastered with bright red posters telling us to STOP AT NOTHING. Cities and towns were supposed to be covered with the messages of peace and common cause that made themselves known through youth who came out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-6cv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23841,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23839\/revisions\/23841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}