How to Be Hipster About World Issues

This past Tuesday I watched a video that my friend had promoted on his Twitter and Tumblr called Kony 2012.  If you haven’t seen it, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc .  Unless you lack compassion, the video is pretty touching and highlights an issue that has been going on for over two decades now. 

By mid-morning Wednesday, the video had gone viral amongst my Facebook friends.  This brought on a surprising amount of negative comments from the male population of my friends list, with most of them posting statuses condemning the sharing of the video.  Their reason for this being,  “it’s been going on since 1986 and people only care now because it’s trendy.  If you want to do something, grab a gun and go to Uganda”.  

 I believe that we should be somewhat cynical of every charity and being wary about donating to Invisible Children, (the charity behind Kony 2012) doesn’t make you a bad person.  I’d like to know where my 30 dollars is going.  I had a problem with a lot of the things that were being said, however, because it turned from campaign bashing to mocking of the situation as a whole.  Also, donating money or trying to make sure I show the video to my friends and family so that they may be informed are both more plausible than going to Uganda with a gun.

This past week I saw a lot of ignorance and racism from people who I thought had a good head on their shoulders.  As for those who said the video was just a trend.  They’ve posted more statuses and memes about Kony 2012 than the people spreading awareness.  Trying really hard not to care seems to be more of the trendy thing here.