Bizarre Kony 2012 Posters Seemingly Contain No Trace of Irony
Categories: Bad Ideas
Kony 2012 is a viral video that attempts to bring us together by alarming us over a common enemy (a dictator using child-warrior slaves) that absolutely nobody could object to. The fuss about the cofounder of Invisible Children, Jason Russell, who apparently went haywire a while back, has died down. But over the weekend, we heard reports of anti-Kony posters cropping up around town after Friday's international "Cover the Night" event. On the way downtown, we saw a couple posted on Himmarshee Street...
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...that had been torn down after a day. Which is a shame, because the originals are painfully misguided and strange.
Here's one of them, which was posted near Old Fort Lauderdale Breakfast House:
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Please note that this poster compares Kony to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, concluding for us that he is "the worst." Now, Kony is a truly horrible man for various reasons, as were the other two. But there's something really creepy about assuming we're so unable to think for ourselves that we need our evil warlords ranked 1-2-3 and to be informed of their various badness. It's convenient that Kony is the worst, because he's the only one who is still alive. Also: just blacking out his face? Isn't that a little heavy-handed, given that just about everyone affected by the Ugandan child-soldier crisis is black? Oh, wait, except the white people who will stop everything by putting up posters and watching YouTube.
This one was posted in front of the Museum of Discovery and Science:
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Hmmm, something we can all agree on. Sounds tempting. Easy. Almost... Orwellian.
Please remember, Kony is a bad warlord, and this blogger supports all efforts to capture and disarm him and his brainwashed forces. But the posters seem to work by reducing all problems to a bright color and tag lines that encourage young people to... uh... stop thinking and join the rebellion. Awkward.
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