A Man Crushed

Our culture gives attention in spurts. Although that's not news to anyone. The Kony2012 campaign exemplified that characteristic. 

I navigated over to Invisible Children recently to see what was up, since that whole subject has fallen out of the social media discourse for the most part. On their site was this post from Jason Russell's wife regarding his health and it seems he was emotionally destroyed by the attention he and his organization received. Apparently he will be in the hospital for weeks and will spend months recovering before he is deemed stable enough to return to work. This is a story that truly saddens me. Imagine pouring your life into a project to have a laser beam of global attention focused on you that goes from majority support to majority ridicule in a matter of a week.

Not only did the rise to fame, the critiques and then public collapse all get talked about as they were happening, most likely they will stick around for awhile for his children to read about, as things on the internet don't just go away. It has become a part of the Russell, IC history.

Invisible Children took advantage of a powerful force: social discourse through social media. And like any powerful force, it can do both good and harm. While I think most any situation can be redeemed, thus far, at least, it seems more harm than good has come from this case, especially in Russell's personal life.

UPDATE: Google search counts over time for Kony.