The curse of virality - a KONY2012 review

So first there was the video.

Then there was the incredible popularity. The video, a plea for help in an effort to bring justice to Joseph Kony, was watched over 100 million times, produced millions - quite possibly billions - of tweets, got over 3.5 million people to pledge to write to their government about the issue, involved several celebrities and other famous figures, and generated hundreds of Facebook groups around the world devoted to "Cover the Night:" a mission to make Kony famous (or rather, infamous) by putting posters of him up everywhere on April 20th.

At around the same time was the criticism. Some fairly harsh, some merely urging caution, but all pointing out several things wrong with the mission - that the organization behind it wasn't financially trustworthy; that they were supporting a militia as corrupt as the man they were trying to catch; that the video, as well as the entire mission, seemed Eurocentric and paternalistic; that the issue was far more complex than they were making it out to be; and a host of other problems. In particular, many Ugandans responded to the video, and in fact a riot broke out at one rural showing of the video, in anger at its message.

Then there was the breakdown - the narrator of the video, co-founder of Invisible Children, apparently due to the incredible stress of trying to manage a viral sensation, temporarily lost his sanity. And this of course came with many, many reactions.

Then, on April 20th, there was a hush, as the world sat waiting to see just how big Cover the Night would be. Some cities deployed extra police officers, uncertain of what to expect. Practically every major city had a Facebook event page for the night with thousands of people listed as attending.

On Saturday morning, cities around the world woke up to a world of red. Posters lined every building on every street, large banners hung from lamppost to lamppost and off the sides of bridges; roads had been turned into giant canvasses of chalk art displaying Kony's now all-too-familiar face. It was everywhere.

...no, no it wasn't. The world woke up and for the most part didn't have much of a clue that anything was different. Take my experience for example - I was walking all over downtown Toronto over the weekend for various errands and events, a total of nearly 20 km, and in all that time I saw a total of two Stop Kony posters. Two. You'd think that with 6000+ people signed up to attend on Toronto's Cover the Night Facebook event page, the posters would be a bit more visible. Unless they all chose to cover the same secluded alleyways.

So what went wrong? Why would a mission that started off so popular so drastically fizzle out? The viral video was immensely successful, was it not? Perhaps it was the massive wave of criticism that disconcerted people? Perhaps it was seeing the leader of the movement going wild on the street? Perhaps if there had been less criticism, if Jason Russell had just managed to keep his act together, the night would have exploded in colour and posters.

No, the problem was in the presentation. The very thing that allowed the video to rack up so many hits was the same thing that caused it to die - virality.

Invisible Children decided to use a fairly new technique for their mission, one that hasn't been applied all that much in the past - a youtube video, intended to be spread via social networking. And this post, to clarify, is going to focus on this medium; the presentation, not the content. While I do have opinions on whether supporting the cause is good or not, I'm not going to discuss that in depth here - so assume, for now, whether you agree or disagree, that Invisible Children Inc. had the purest of goals and an ethically flawless plan, and that Cover the Night would have, if successful, actually been significantly beneficial to the current political and social climate in central Africa. Keeping this in mind, let's scrutinize the viral video plan.

Likely, they had looked at other viral phenomena (Trololo, Rebecca Black's Friday, and Susan Boyle come to mind as ones the general public is likely to have heard of) and figured that the same networking power that allowed those videos to hit the 8-digit mark would push theirs somewhere as well. And when the views started piling in, they got excited because their message was being spread.

One thing they may not have checked out though... (taken from Google Trends)

Trololo

Rebecca Black

Susan Boyle

The common factor in all these three diagrams is that every viral video spikes, and then after perhaps a week of popularity, there's a sharp decline. Within a month, the popularity of a video is significantly lower than its peak. You can point out a few differences in the above graphs - for example, in the surprising resurgence of Susan Boyle one month later - but these aren't constants. The constant is the spike, short popularity, and quick downfall.

So, then, is this any surprise at all?

Kony

I suppose the spike is much sharper here than the other videos (no "plateau week"), which is definitely a little surprising, and they couldn't have expected. But the lesson from above still holds true here, and is something they should have expected - a viral video will, for the most part, leave the consciousness of the internet within a month after its spike. Again, there are exceptions (nyan cat being one), but it's never wise to depend on exceptions.

So if Invisible Children Inc. wanted Cover the Night to be a success... why didn't they set it for March 20? Or keep it set at April 20, but release the video a month later than they did? They might have chosen a date a month and a half away in order to give people time to prepare - but on the contrary, given too much time to complete a task often makes people less likely to do it (the "there's still time" attitude - the root of procrastination). And besides, people are busy and constantly bombarded with information, there's no way they're going to spend fifty days thinking about a single cause. Give them twenty, and if it's an important enough task, they might decide to keep it in mind the whole time, and carry the excitement through to the end.

Others might argue that no, this social-media-generation is just too passive, nothing would have happened no matter what the timing. That the quote from Hotel Rwanda fits all too well here: "I think if people see this footage, they'll say 'Oh, my God, that's horrible.' And then they'll go on eating their dinners." But I don't completely agree. I've seen legitimate effort go into this movement; if the people who saw the video and were touched by it were told they could do something to help right away, I think many of them would have, especially after seeing how many others were on the same boat. I don't think this would have been a good thing, because it would have been taking advantage of people's emotions to build the movement, but it would have gotten results (perhaps this is exactly the reason they gave it so much time... because they wanted everyone involved to be there because they had made a rational decision to, apart from the emotion of the video?). Yes, for a large number of people, the issue would have been passivity - many people would have gotten excited online, but fail to follow through, regardless of timing. But more generally, I would say the issue is not just plain passivity - it's a short attention span.

To us (meaning practically anyone on the internet enough to read this blog post), a viral video - or practically any shared social media - is a one-time thing. We see it once, or maybe a couple hundred times in a day if it's really funny, and we bring it up in conversations and on our online profiles while it's fresh in our mind, but soon enough there's something else exciting to look at, and we throw it in the giant toy box of all the coolfunnyrandominterestingthoughtprovokingdisgustingaweinspiring things we've ever seen, to be called upon if needed, but not kept on our mental workbench. And if you make a video and hope it goes viral, this is what you must expect.

KONY2012 in Tokyo

And so here we are, on the other side of April 20, with not much different than before. Actually that's not entirely true; there was, in fact, a significant worldwide turnout (some instances are shown on the KONY2012 website). Many people did stay devoted; those who had thought the issues through and decided to stick by the cause (and perhaps those who had bought the action kit when they were still passionate about it and felt it would be a waste not to at least put those few posters up). The students at my old high school (see picture on the left) are a good example of this. Though they were concerned about the financial issues behind Invisible Children Inc., they still wanted to support the cause - so after discussion, prayer, and planning, they decided to make all their own t-shirts, posters, etc. so they didn't have to support the organization financially. And when April 20 rolled around, they were ready. Perhaps not enough students to cover Tokyo, but from a high school of just 200 students, the kind of turnout you see here is remarkable.

So you have the people who thought through the issues and decided to support the cause. And then you have the people who thought through the issues and decided that the plan would do more harm than good. And I have strong respect for both of these groups, for choosing to spend the time to think through the issues just long enough to be able to understand their own position. Unfortunately these seem to be the minority. You can tell by the thousands of "attendees" on hundreds of Facebook groups who never followed through that there are millions of people who, though they may think they care when they first watch the video because of how it tugs at their emotions, are all too ready to move on when it's no longer entertaining. And there are likely just as many people who saw a single critique of the movement and used that as a getaway; an excuse to stop thinking about the issue without a guilty conscience.

Although, who am I to judge that? I definitely put some thought into the issue, reading what I figured was a large variety of viewpoints and primary sources before deciding that supporting the Stop Kony movement wasn't part of my purpose here. But to the people whose lives revolve around issues such as these, I probably seem just as fickle and "I have an excuse to stop thinking now" as everyone else. I am very much a part of the internet generation, susceptible to many of the same failures.

But going back to the people who made the video; they tried something new and innovative, with very little previous experience to go on. They couldn't have known how it would turn out, and while it sparked attention beyond their expectations, it sparked far less action. Because in the end, a lot of people care, but they don't care for long enough. And this is especially true of anything shared worldwide by social media.

Finally, a related page that discusses a lot of the things I was talking about, and from more credible sources. Oh, and apparently there will be a new step of action on November 3; I wonder how many people will show up to that, 8 months after the release of the viral video? But by this time you're probably at the end of your attention span for this topic, so it's about time to move on to something new that the internet has to offer.