I must admit I have been moved by the Stop Kony meme currently circulating on what we used call the ‘information superhighway’. At first I was sceptical, fearing it might be some kind of lame hoax, but a quick background check, via the utterly infallible BBC, proved that Kony is indeed real, and a really bad bastard to boot. He deserves to be brought to justice along with a fair number of twisted criminal scum who have been operating around the world with functional impunity for far too long. If this campaign is successful and this vile person is legally caught and given the trial denied to his morally kindred spirit, Gaddafi, we will have witnessed the most significant event of Web 2.0.
For a long time I have thought that if all the cultural debris flowing around Facebook every day was focussed occasionally on matters of importance we could see a significant positive change in some aspects of the crazy world we all share. The internet offers education for all in a way that would have been unthinkable to most people of even twenty years ago. The flipside is that it is heftily crammed with more nonsense than any rational person can imagine even now, and curiously enough it is this side that has been embraced by big business and the main power blocks of the world.
The digital globalisation of the past decade has changed the way people interact. Not always for the better, but you would be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t enjoy at least some of the benefits of this new connected age. We are probably living in what historians will one day think of a fancy name to describe as – the time when we had computers but didn’t connect our brains directly to them. A key historical moment in this period could be when people declare en masse that they are not prepared to put up with the same level of oppression and indifference that has gone before and demand something better. Some would point to the Arab Spring as proof that this is already underway, although this example also highlights some of the dangers of this approach.
If we are to see a brave new world of global facebook democracy we sure as hell better make sure we choose carefully whose trends we follow. We could face the real threat of Justin Bieber or Cheryl Cole being taken seriously; and no amount of social change could pay for that. More seriously, we would probably see the likes of Fred Goodwin hanged as well as de-knighted.
If this kind of easily led and totally righteous global lynch mob is to catch on then no one can guess where it could lead us. Unless of course you have read some popular history. Alternatively, and some would say more likely, it may trend for a few days before fizzling out as quickly as Rebecca Black. Still, I hope it succeeds and brings about a peaceful revolution of the mind, leading to a fairer, more even, more just and downright sexier human race.
But that’s something to ponder on another day. For now it is sufficient to say:
F*** Kony!!
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