Kony 2012

Which I feel I did. For instance, the kid knew that he was on camera, and I found that obvious. It changed the way he reacted to my eye.

 

So after seeing my Facebook literally filled with people spreading the KONY video, I felt pretty pissed that people think they're helping without actually looking up anything on Invisible Children, or the people they support. Its literally a Google search away. And the use of children, and fancy effects, further aggravates me, especially as a film student. It looks cool I admit, but its being used to get people money, more than half of which is spent just making movies and travel budgets, as well as support an army who are being reported as doing some of the same things Kony is doing.

Regardless, attention being brought to him is good, but supporting Invisible Children is questionable, at best. It reminds me of those annoying pictures of cancer victims or the like being spread, and having people "Like" it to donate. IF YOU HAVE THE MONEY TO DO THE RIGHT THING, JUST DO IT. Don't make it a public stunt so people pay attention to you.

 

Wow. Did all of you guys just skip through the post I posted? There was a great quote with information regarding that tumblr. And my faith is further restored to IC. I went to a meeting today and they seem pretty legit. Regarding the April 20th night thing. I was worried about how it might count as vandalism or at the very least something illegal, but they seem to be going about it with a real plan, to make it organized and I guess get permits or something so it's not illegal and we don't all get arrested or something. Anyway, ALL OF YOU should go back a page and ACTUALLY READ through that quote I posted. It'll answer all your questions. And you can e-mail the guy too.

 

On the Visible Children piece I'm a bit annoyed, they commit many of the same fallacies especially an exaggeration and manipulation of statistics.

Counting travel and film making in the unfocused or wasted part of the budget is biased. They are an activist group that has noted these awareness videos as a great tool (which they definitely are), and frequently makes trips to Africa for various purposes and they are not exactly cheap. Of course those eats up a ton of the budget.

They note crimes of the Ugandan military without noting that those some crimes happen in every military and that surrounding militaries are just as bad or greatly under equipped for this feat (often both). Since peaceful measures have produced no results and as noted actually were used as a tool by Kony, I think using the Ugandan military is a viable option. If they have a counter idea I would love to hear it but I do think this is better than ignoring the problem or the useless peace talks.




As for Makaze's piece of appealing to emotion I would like to add a "well duh" Persuasion is all about appeals to logic and emotion. I give them a pat on the back for successfully using both. They spell out the problem in a way that not only makes it undeniably a problem, but also says that you should care and can do something about it. Was the kid staged? Maybe. I don't see it as fake but I'm bad at that. There was certainly a lot of footage that wasn't used because of it not being impacting enough, and the kid was aware of the very general idea of what his father did. But the effect is there. If you want to say the kid is acting then fine but just look at what they were trying to portray. And if you still don't like it then ignore it. There is nothing about that sequence that should count against the point, and if it does nothing for you then just take the rest of the video at its face value.


EDIT: @FKB: I admit, for now I've tl;dr'd that. I do promise to read through that later.

 

I feel this is entirely relevant.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...2012-growing-outrage-in-Uganda-over-film.html