Kony2012 is the story of a man Jason Russell and his relentless quest to stop Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony Let's begin where the action started On March 5th, 2012 a charity called Invisible Children published a high production video called Kony 2012 It was an awareness campaign seeking to mobilize action to capture or kill you gain and ward Joseph Kony and the goal of the story was to make Kony famous 30 minutes long. It really tried to pull at your heartstrings At the end of my life I want to say that the world we've left behind is one that Gavin can be proud of a place that doesn't allow Joseph Kony's and child soldiers and Little Kevin would have been proud because it took off like no video on YouTube ever had we wanted 500,000 views in the whole year of 2012 we got 500,000 views in the first three hours it received 100 million views in the first six days 1.4 million likes click that link in the description below They clicked it so hard the website went down and in the email was so inundated that the service provider assumed it was not tak And temporarily pulled the plug The Times named it the most viral video ever it raised the charity over 20 million dollars People really went good-time bananas for this video and those Ugandan kids Four million hashtags people changed their Facebook profiles. So you knew it was a big deal a Fan made mobile game you woke about Joseph Kony. Yeah, buddy. You work enough to get a tattoo People were up for pretty much anything to stop Kony as long as it didn't involve any practical action one like Eagles one saved child We do his Joseph Kony and what's all the fuss? well He's the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army LRA my god you greasy, and he really is one of the most evil people living today I mentioned the worst crime you can think of committing and he done it thousands of times over takes children Makes them kill their parents and eat their parents The surviving girls will be kept to six slaves and the boy is conscripted into the LRA as child soldiers I know it's kind of a bummer. It's all part of a civil conflict that's been going on for 30 years We'll get into the details later, but for now consider this our one-dimensional bad guy And Here's our protagonist and Jason Russell the figurehead of Kony 2012 and Invisible Children He's a devout Christians Stereotypically Californian. I do consider myself a refined Valley dude, but he has a bad-boy sign too So it all starts in 2003 when as a naive and aspiring filmmaker He goes to Uganda with two friends in search of a story While driving through a rural village a car was shot in front of us by a rebel army Who was led by a guy named Joseph Kony? They drive to a city for safety and find this Turns out is part of a nightly routine Kids live in the villages, but commute to the city to sleep there to avoid being kidnapped in Midnight rates by the LRA Thousands and thousands of kids without an adult in sight Jason had found his story and a cause It must have made a real impression on him because for the next 10 years he did occasion himself almost Exclusively to trying to improve things in Uganda and stop Kony Kony 2012 was the culmination but in the preceding years he tried a bunch of other schemes this the bracer campaign This White's daily broadcast about where the LRA is and where they're active. And this do what we always do dance This is all real Net early Christians have been raised about his sexual orientation all these other rumors - that you were gay. Mm-hmm Yeah, I've heard those rumors. Yeah My parents started a large children's theater organization. So I am theatrical tactical Yeah, okay, that makes sense Straight men are allowed to enjoy musicals. It's current year Back to Kony 2012. So the video lays out a plan called cover the night Here's what you do pay $30 for your super special Kony action candy wall as nests in the kit You'll find five items button bracelet stickers shirt and these posters then on April 20th in the dead of night go out and Vandalize your town with awareness and wake up to hundreds of thousands of posters demanding justice on every clock is going to be amazing everyone was on board the countdown to April 20th had begun at all Jason and curry had to do was keep the momentum going and Not banana it up It's the new way to move the world to action this movie is not without critics critics Say the film manipulates the facts simplifying the story simplifying a wildly complex message Made Joseph Kony and his forces have been significantly reduced throw war Next week, this will be a passing fact white. Western is sort of getting on a bandwagon and actually they haven't got a clue what they're talking about a Day or two later the heady excitement gave way to more down-to-earth analysis Media commentators started making scathing critiques of the video and testimony from Uganda was an entirely positive either It's important that we can have people who are much amazing But using because problems then it got really serious teenage girls started weighing in This is wrong But it was seen by four million people from a source of my mum's hid it so it must be true The term selective ism started cropping up more and more Legitimate questions were asked how will the money donated be spent? We'd have to go to the Ugandan military Why did you put your son in the film? You know, why would you put your son in the film? You know Why did you put yourself in the film those questions about our sister? Why they saying Kony is in Uganda when he's actually in the Central African Republic Invisible Children wasn't popular among other charities either they were holding the limelight and as they released Kearney 2012 just two days before International Women's Day a critical fundraising time for some even the Ugandan prime minister took a few jams We do not need the sleek video on YouTube forests take notice Once people started feeling misled they turned against the organization and squared the blame on one Person the pressure was building Online backlash and a hectic schedule was starting to take a toll my phone Every second, we just millions of supporters on one side Millions of critics on the other on and on and on make Kearney famous. Well it made Jason famous too, and the pressure kept increasing He was flying all over the country to spread his message Took the red-eye to New York landed at 5:00 in the morning working around the clock on the Today Show People magazine Reuters by day 3 I was in LA doing interview after interview after interview 17 interviews in 48 hours He was sleeping less and becoming more erratic not being able to sleep not being able to stop my racing mind Criticism from every direction it was like you're the worst You're terrible and Connie's dead They started saying the whole project was for his ego or based on greed and not just criticism Responsibility, how are you going to stop children from being murdered Jason. You promised a solution Jason When are you gonna deliver Kony at the end of that day? my mind was Exhausted to release the pressure he and his family tried to take a couple of days off by going to Palm Springs But people recognized him there too. So they hid away in their hotel room with the curtains closed Jason was starting to crack paranoia Delusions of grandeur he went with his family to see the lorax and he thought the film was speaking to him directly Voices and Jason's had told him that he needed to get to New York in the next 12 hours or Kony would win Whatever that meant then He stripped off all of his clothes and ran out into the street I Was on a street in San Diego Totally naked and crazy out of my mind someone driving by in a car took a film a video on their phone and they sold it to TMZ for $30,000 and then my naked and crazy Mess went viral as well. Some have said that he was jacking him and that he was on drugs Neither is true It's just a very distressed man having a mental episode. Were you also masturbating today? Who's that - no one who was there ever said that that was happening Yeah one I'm naked so it's not a far extension You have you no imagination that he was taken to the hospital not Jail Police say when they showed up they didn't see any of that and was taken to a local medical facility that he was not arrested them and then he thought the staff were trying to kill him just One of those things where I'm like, I don't believe what you're saying. You're trying to kill me He ran around in his underwear kicking in doors until eventually he was subdued and sedated you come back to yourself as you know yourself Two weeks two weeks Two weeks. Well, yeah later on one Sharona Reed tried to sue mr Russell for the trauma of having to see him do naked calisthenics as far as I can tell though that lawsuit went nowhere Can you think of anything else that's worse and running around naked going like this on TMZ? Well, maybe one thing While all of this was happening the countdown to the day of action was still ticking Thousands of kits had been sold get ready for an awareness campaign. So effective you'll think you're living and you get the kids rolled out into the street selfie sticks and posters ready Let's do it Let's save those kids We're changing the world Yes But it wasn't all well intended some took it as a chance to vandalize their neighborhood with impunity The adults were left to clean up the mess And despite the impression you might get from this fancy montage The turnout was abysmal here are some figures Toronto 50,000 people registered real attendance 50 Sidney 18,000 people registered real attendance 12 Montreal 4800 registered real attendance zero instead, they canceled their event and put up a post calling Invisible Children a fraud organization This is what four million Coney hashtags gets you now I bet you want to know where Invisible Children? Jason Russell and Kony are now But before I tell you that I want to go on two quick tangents of things. I found while researching In the Kony 2012 video you'll see this guy Louis Moreno Ocampo chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, this would be the organization that charges Kony if he was ever caught well in 2017 a bunch of Louie's emails were leaked and they detailed one hell of a caper to catch Kony and bring him to justice I'm not making any of the following up right here's the plan lil Kony out of the jungle with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as bait straight from a Hollywood movie Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt attempting to arrest an African warlord so it would go the ælis couple would fly to the edge of the jungle where Kony is hiding and Call him up with an invitation to dinner Kony Starstruck would of course say yes He'd show up presumably bottle of wine in hand and ready to mingle then imagine his shock It was a trap all along special forces would pop out from behind the salad bar and get their guy One idea appears to have been for Angelina Jolie to him to a private dinner where he would be arrested It was a foolproof plan, but unfortunately, it was never realized once mr. Olli stopped responding to lose weird emails Ocampo approached George Clooney for use of his spy Satellite the chief prosecutor had also attempted to recruit George Clooney in a plot to fly spy satellites over Libya Yes, it's correct. George Clooney partnered with a satellite company to spy on El Bashar of Sudan Okey doke. Anyway, he responded that the satellite wasn't powerful enough So then Ocampo moved on to his backup date Sean Penn whom he invited to the UN security meeting in South Sudan What And there were some people having fun with Kony 2012 as well turns out Kony looks a lot like Carl Weathers in the movie predator So an idea was formed Take this screenshot from predator posted on Facebook and say how great he is without mentioning the name Then wait for some slack twists to immediately assume, it's Joseph Kony, then you call them racist It was good for a few minutes of fun Then they tried it on the official meetup pages Promptly deleted them And we're back. So get a load of this total car crash dumpster fire shitstorm diaper hurricane. Am I right guys? We'll know despite all the mishaps in Porton out Kony 2012 was a mess of success the goal was to make an obscure warlord in rural Uganda a household name and they succeeded a reaching the hundreds of millions on a budget of about 1.5 million dollars any marketing agency would kill for that. In fact, seven years later You probably clicked on this video because you have some vague notion of Kony and that video already now Let me give you a very brief rundown on where everyone is then. Let's get outta here Invisible Children outside of long term and small-scale projects they've largely ceased operations Joseph Kony, he's still out there but his army is shrinking and splintering he is effectively in hibernation And Jason Russell, he's no longer with Invisible Children He's also been breakdown free since 2012, but he's still doing the activism thing Look, I've had to gloss over so many details in this video and there are so many more questions to be answered But I don't want this video to be an hour long or to take two months more to make So I'm going to round this one off with Q&A on the second channel What about that 20 million dollars? They raised why didn't the US military or the Ugandan military ever just bomb the shit out of Kony? What did Kony have to say about the video? All of these questions and a ton more plus any questions you may have of your own Uganda one to see it Remember Ugandan knuckles
"People were up for pretty much anything to stop Kony, as long as it didn't involve any practical action."
I was in 8th grade when kony 2012 was a thing. At my school they sent everyone to the auditorium to watch the video, and then the principal encouraged everyone to donate. Looking back, that was really fucking bizarre.
The craziest thing I pulled from this is that most top celebrities are probably spies
Just here for the red alert music.
I don't think the Brad and Angelina idea was that bad. I'm pretty sure El Chapo was captured after being influenced by Sean Penn.
Jackin it in San Diego. He’s about to jack it.
Kinda feel bad for this guy. People talk about how important mental health is nowadays, and how you shouldn't feel ashamed of it, but then this guy gets made into a joke because of a complete mental breakdown. He seemed to have good intentions, but I probably don't know the whole story.
I need that Kony, Brad Pitt, and Aneglina Jolie plan made into a movie.
I remember the night this thing went MASSIVELY viral, literally everyone on my facebook friends list (this was before snapchat or really even Instagram) sent me a link to the video. I watched it and got so hype, even more hype knowing that the entire rest of the world was watching it, I was all ready to go out and protest and flip some cars and shit, then I went to bed, I woke up and couldn't care less.
That and the whole Mayan thing were the two weirdest things about 2012.
I'm pretty sure that was the year the timeline diverged or the simulation glitched or something. What a strange year.