Stopping Your Inhibition- Kony 2012

Please! Just watch this above video!!!


What just happened there? You took a moment to think about what you were just asked to do. Your eyes went up the rectangular play button as you gave the thumbnail picture a once over. You instantly doubted the words of a stranger asking you to click on a link. You don't like being bossed around, or suckered into what might be a scam or silly trick. And yet you're still reading this, trying to get more information, trying to decide whether or not to watch the above video.

If you're anything like me, and 99% of the rest of the world, you still haven't watched the video (if you're the 1%, then hats off to you). Why should you, after all? You know nothing about it, and chances are you stumbled onto this page completely on accident. Google Images probably brought you here. But I'm asking you to stay just a while longer. A part of you is still curious, still willing to listen.

We've all dealt with inhibition before: the moment of decision, of weighing pros against cons, of evaluating the risks and benefits of any given situation. It took me about twenty minutes to decide whether to take a chunk out of my night today to write this, if it was worth it to come back to my blog after a month or two of inactivity. But if even one person, out of all the readers who happens upon this (it could be you!), decides to take a leap of faith and watch the video, then it will all be worth it to me. In all seriousness, just do it. Just watch the first few minutes of the video so you know what I'm talking about. You made it this far, so I'll even provide another link HERE. Come back after you know a bit more about what I'm talking about.

Kony needs to be stopped. There is no doubt about that, and I'm sure 99% of you people out there agree with me. But why is it that this conflict has dragged out for so long? It's inhibition. We watch a video, feel sad and enraged, experience a twinge of guilt, decide mentally to contribute... and then what? We go about our day. Our inhibition takes over. It's an automatic process, as we start to weigh the value of the effort needed to DO something. I'll be the first to admit the irony of my situation, but it's something that everyone deals with.

Inhibition prevents things from being done. In a world dominated by Facebook and the internet, why not use that to our advantage? Don't think about what your friends and family will think when they see that you've shared another "chain" link as your status. Don't check to see what the thumbnail will be, and what others will think about you posting it. Don't stop to contemplate whether or not you'll get enough "likes" or comments to make your effort worth it. See? You're inhibiting yourself now.

Until there is instant communication between people and nations, ignorance is the real threat. I only learned about the Invisible Children organization a few months ago, by chance, when our school had an assembly about the conflict in Uganda. There are more than 300 million people in the United States. If everyone knew about Joseph Kony, he would be arrested in a heartbeat for his unimaginable crimes. You are now one less person who has not heard the word. The beauty of "Kony 2012" is that like anything else on the internet, it has the potential to go viral. But let's make it happen.

I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed right now after sharing the Kony 2012 video. I don't care that I've gotten only one "like" since I posted it. What's cool is that I see three more of my friends donating their status to the cause. I scroll down in my history and see others that posted/shared the message even before I did. It's hard to trace it to just one of my friends, but I know it's because of Facebook that I'm writing this post right now. Unlike other chain statuses, I truly hope this doesn't die for a while. Here is one of my friends' awesome, inspiring, summarizing words after sharing the video: (his exact status) This dude Kony is seriously a piece of shit.