Flawed messengers reveal real hope

This Daisey story and KONY2012 make me sad. Sad because of the terrible issues they highlight, but also sad because, in contradiction to their intentions, they've given comfort to the neigh-sayers by being misguided/misleading.

We are often told (by cynical people) that we live in a cynical world, one where nobody could tear themselves away from their touch-screens long enough to care about anybody else - not even people they know, must less ones that they don't know. In fact, we're great at finding rationals to not care, to not help others: they brought it on themselves, I suspect the funds don't get fairly distributed, why help other nations out when we've got our own problems, why help our own people out they're just feckless.

Every once in a while, something comes into view, often via those same touch-screens we can't tear ourselves away from, that makes people aware of an issue. When this happens, it often disproves the cynical view, people respond openly with hope and a genuine desire to help: they do care. As with KONY2012, which went instantly viral and showed that thousands of people took it at face value, in an uncynical way, because when presented with a horrible situation, even one miles away and affecting people who practice a different culture, they cared. Maybe just enough to pass the word on, but they did.

The same was true of Mike Daisey. To Apple's legion of unquestioning fanboys, who see high-end electronics, beautifully made and marketed at the well-heeled, as virtuous, the company can do no wrong. Those of us who own their devices don't want to be made to feel bad about something that makes us feel ridiculously good. So, not much attention had been paid to the many, many news stories detailing the horrible conditions under which these shiny toys are made. Daisey's rhetorical one-man show caught the attention and contributed to a growing call for Apple to clean-up its act, so that it's as shiny as the buffed aluminium that makes their electronics so appealing.

Get the message out in an evocative way and people do respond, they do care. At the same moment the neigh-sayers, squirming awkwardly, look for reasons not to care. They pour scorn on the way the message was spread: over social media, or they question the credulity of the re-bloggers and re-tweeters. They may even sight a patronising cultural imperialism as a turn off. This all takes place before any real evidence appears to cause the original stories to be questioned.

Then the worst thing happens. The stories are shown to be questionable. The motives may still be real but the methods and practices are misguided at best, fraudulent at worst.

Daisey, it turns out, didn't visit as many places as he mentions in his entertaining rant, and, although nearly everything he mentions is real, he didn't witness much of it first hand and certainly not in the manner he describes. As for KONY2012, they're a real non-profit but they have a poor charitable rating (a mere 2 stars), owing to the fact that they keep closed accounts. Who knows for sure where all the money they receive goes, although it seems some of it ends up funding another ugandan rebel faction. One that it appears is as unsavoury as Kony's Lord's Resistance Army.

OK, this is all a salient reminder that we should be more informed before we take a stance. Some of the neigh-sayers were, in truth, only offering this caution. That in itself is no bad thing, a call to be properly informed. Yet sadly, the clay feet of the messengers has offered, for those who ridicule and rubbish every hopeful act, proof that they were right, that it's never worth caring: everything's a scam. Many who chose to care will feel duped, and foolish - the kind of foolish that the cynical seek to avoid at all costs. It may lead to some harding their attitudes in the future, for fear of being conned again. The whole thing ends up looking like it was fake, the stories and the caring; as the critics claim that its all just shallow click-revolution, and slacktivism.

It wasn't all fake. While the intentions of the authors may still be true, they may not be and, in any case, its hard to argue that now. But the intentions of those who were encouraged to hope and to care were real. The overwhelming evidence suggests that to be true. Given better information, via a less self-serving media, those people could make a real difference. I hope we don't lose sight of that and instead find that Invisible Children and Mike Daisey have just given us another couple of excuses not to care. We really don't need anymore of those.