"Korny 2012" -- What it really is: a Facebook ad

Given the multitude of comments on the "Kony 2012" video, I don't have much to add to this debate, except to note that this corny, slick, superficial, dumbing-down visual piece of simplification appears to be essentially an advertisement for Facebook. References in the film to Facebook's powers of agitprop abound, and include an image of Fakebook's founder, the mean, odious Mr. Zuckerberg, evidently meant to be a hero in the struggle against evil in our social-media interconnected world.

So, on a most elementary level, what the YouTube sensation is really "communicating," in certainly not a subtle or particularly subliminal way, is twofold:

(a) To "fb friends," especially young ones: Facebook is an groovy, easy-to-use tool to fix problems you need to know little about; it makes you feel good as you click away on your computer, safely absconded from the "real world" you're trying to save. Well, ok, in your solidarity with the Korny Movement, it may ask you to stand outside of a government building with a banner. Far easier than being beaten up by the police in Cairo.

(b) Far most important, to the real-power guys who really count in this world (I wish I were just kidding), among them advertisers, the veritable, so-called really "visible" message of "Kony Invisible Children" is that  Facebook can mobilize at a moment's notice millions of potential consumers (suckers?) globally; there's no better place anywhere, physical or virtual, to get big, big bangs for your ad bucks by manipulating -- through fancy graphics, instant communications, putative cyberspace "interconnectivity."  Through these means, it appeal to a vaguely defined "good" cause -- millions of the well-meaning uninformed worldwide so that they will buy what you want to sell.

Substitute "invisible children" with "things go better with Coke" (what's the real difference between these two activities, from a marketing "strategic planning" point of view) -- and the Korny 2012 marketing message becomes crystal clear: buy/use Facebook.

Image from