Has The Game Changed Yet?

I can’t help but thinking that something is missing. Something big was supposed to happen. Things should have changed. Has another doomsday passed without incident? Something’s amiss.

Me?

Oh that’s right – what ever happened to that Kony guy? Wasn’t the ‘Get Kony’ campaign supposed to change the world? Does anyone remember what that was all about? Anyone remember it at all… Anyone?

No one remembers Kony. Just as quickly as these internet phenomenons crop up, people forget, go back to watching Big Bang Theory, and things are back to normal. Its like it never even happened. The game stays the same. Did anyone really think it would turn out differently??

That is, anyone, except for the 7pm Project and the so called ‘Social Media Experts’... They fell over each other to be the first to bang on about how the world as we know it had changed thanks to YouTube, Facebook and a video about Africa. The youth had mobilised and revolution was in the air! Really? Is that the same youth that have now gone balls crazy over the kids from One Direction?

Revolutionaries? 

Next time these social commentary experts think revolution by internet, they may want to hold off for a minute. Does watching a YouTube clip or clicking ‘Like’ on Facebook really mean anything at all? Justin Bieber songs take up 3 of the top 10 YouTube videos of all time, with over 1 billion views. What does this say? Nothing at all is what it says. YouTube is YouTube - entertainment. Not a revolutionary call-to-arms. People who watched the Kony campaign didn’t gain a social justice compass from watching a clip about kids in Uganda. They weren't mobilised. The next thing they did was watch a Bieber video.

YouTube top 10 March 2012

I wonder how the execs at channel 10 feel about jumping in head first without a parachute or a clue onto the Kony band wagon . Their screening of the YouTube with commentary from, ahem, ‘experts’ including Carrie Bickmore showed a desperate grab for attention and viewers. Although, as expected, Bickmore just yapped on inanely about her own kid, seemingly oblivious to why she was actually still at work. I hear the new leader of North Korea has made a propaganda movie about the ascendancy of North Korea over all other nations. Interested Channel 10?

Surely even Channel 10 could see that there was something not quite right about the whole thing? It was no shock when the stories about the movie and the organisation behind it started to surface. Reports of a shady, ultra Christian, anti gay, and financially secretive organisation with no action plan beyond supporting a questionable military had nobody surprised. And apparently their whole raison d’être, the villain at the centre of it all, Kony himself, hadn’t been around for years. Even the Ugandan Government said no thanks to Kony 2012!

The last thing heard of this story was that the guy behind it all ended up running around the streets of San Diego butt naked!