Cover the Night

By Hugo O’Doherty



Alighting from the subway at 42nd Street a click before 10 p.m. on April 20th, Midtown Manhattan was just as you would expect it be on a Friday evening. People were milling about, pestered by charming young men with flyers trying to tempt them into comedy shows. Those out for a meal were searching for a nightcap before heading home, while others — reeking of cologne and perfume — were just getting their night started. It was a normal, busy, boisterous Friday after sundown. Yet it wasn’t meant to be.

As soon as I reached street level, I was looking for people dressed in red. Red represents danger; red draws a crowd; red insinuates blood. It’s easy to miss someone in Times Square, though. There are lights, billboards and thousands of people moving in every direction. No one really says “see you in Times Square” — you need to be more specific than that. That being said, the activists on the Internet said there would be thousands of people here — each one ready to spend the night putting up posters — yet I was required to walk two blocks from 42nd Street to 44th Street before I found them. It wasn’t a sea of red, more a puddle.

Do you remember a day in early March when you did your usual morning Internet routine while half your friends and followees were sharing the same video made by a non-profit called Invisible Children? You probably looked at it too. You may even have shared it again. Within a week, more than 100 million people had watched it — that’s more than the entire populations of California, New York, Texas and Florida combined. The message was simple: a depraved warlord in Central Africa is kidnapping children, arming them, and forcing them into murder and prostitution, and you, yes you, could help stop it. It was universally hailed as a social media triumph by supporters and detractors alike. To get that many views was seen as an inherent social media success, but the beauty of Kony 2012 was that it asked viewers to do something active six weeks hence — go out and put up posters in their communities with the aim of raising awareness. Unwittingly or not, Invisible Children (the non-profit that produced the video) provided us with the ultimate litmus test for social media: can ignorance of an issue be turned into organized, rabid activism in a matter of weeks?

I spotted Shannon and Noah, two high school friends from Kinnelon, New Jersey from about 20 feet away. Completely covered in red and white face paint, they had the word “Kony” written across their cheeks. “I saw like 40 people had shared it on Facebook and I had no idea what it was so I decided to watch it,” stated Shannon. “And I know that a lot of people — what ended up happening in our town at least — a lot of people would watch it and get hyped up about it for two days, then they kind of lost interest.” Noah, an extremely well-spoken teen with a very evident social conscience, stated that “for the first time, I really felt connected to an organization and felt ‘wow, we can really make a difference.’” They were glad to be there, but a very salient sense of “No, you first” hung around as those who’d worn red Kony bracelets through March sheepishly found others things to do, a fact admitted by Shannon. A lot of people were washing their hair that night. It probably didn’t help that this day in the calendar was widely known as “4-20” by those who enjoy hippie lettuce.

“Cover the Night” was an effort at using social media to rally people around a cause in huge numbers and, in some senses, it was a success. Some people did show up, but they were the hardcore. The softer supporters probably dropped off around the time, or even before, Jason Russell, Invisible Children’s public figurehead and co-founder, was arrested in San Diego after a bizarre public breakdown during which he was filmed naked, beating the pavement and shouting wildly. Invisible Children had spent the previous fortnight responding to heavy criticism of the organization’s goals, means, values and finances — a toll too heavy for one man to bear upon his shoulders. For Russell, social media was both blessing and his kryptonite. In spite of the negative attention, supporters remained loyal and, via the various social media through which most of them had originally seen the video, trumpeted “Cover the Night” as the center piece of the campaign.

Social media has been harnessed as a means towards managing campaigns of all sorts for a many years now. Realcity ran a story about how social media, in its embryonic Myspace form, allowed a group of students in Bethel, Connecticut to coalesce around an unjustly suspended student while staying ahead of a teaching staff that hadn’t yet figured out the potential of the Internet. It’s easy to forget that, in the timeline of social media, what we have at our disposal today is probably more akin to a Ford Model T than a Hybrid. We know it will continue to change and improve, we’re just not sure where that will lead. In the language of Donald Rumsfeld, it’s a “known unknown”.

What the Bethel Middle School episode showed was that when it comes to formulating a campaign via social media, you need to plan it as soon as possible. This is the era of short attention spans, the age of fast food, the epoch of watching videos about dogs skateboarding on YouTube, the time of simple and easy gratification. Planning something for six weeks down the line will not capitalize on initial momentum. In the case of Kony 2012, the key to that initial momentum was basic human empathy, but empathy is always stronger when it is localized. That breeds not just a different, more tangible sort of empathy, but also the very real (if unconscious) possibility of witnessing the goal — the administering of justice — first hand.

For Kony 2012 supporters, there were twin goals: the potential of seeing a criminal being brought to justice and the liberation of the children he’d kidnapped and enslaved. Those involved in the Bethel protests, however, could dream about carrying the victim aloft through the school gates as his suspension was terminated. Those involved in “Cover the Night” are extremely unlikely to be present if and when Kony is arrested (or, given that this would be a US-led mission, assassinated). Whether we know it or like it or not, taking part in a protest campaign is rarely pure altruism. We also want something for ourselves, something more than T-shirts and bracelets, and being there when things happen is a part of that.

The defensive warning shots asking us to reconsider the role of social media have been fired by none other than Arianna Huffington. If ever there was a case of someone biting that hand that feeds it, this is it. “The media world’s fetishization of social media has reached idol-worshipping proportions,” wrote the founder of the Huffington Post in March of this year. “And today, we are in great haste to celebrate something going viral, but seem completely unconcerned whether the thing that went viral added one iota of anything good — including even just simple amusement — to our lives.” Huffington, in spite of the fact that her piece seems to have been written without a trace of irony, is probably on to something here. What she asks is whether the sheer numbers (“hits”) that an item being shared receives is worth celebrating in and of itself; Huffington says “not necessarily.” The number of concerted “Cover the Night” activists was minute when compared with the amount of hits the video received. The champagne corks were popped too soon.

If the net result of the video doesn’t include Kony’s capture and a return to relative safety and normality for the children in his Lord’s Resistance Army, those early spring celebrations will be looked upon as premature. Social media is a means, not an end, and to consciously consider what the goal of a social media strategy or project may be is often forgotten. When it’s all about numbers, the quantitative supplants the qualitative and we’re left with forgotten aims and the celebration of not much in particular. April 20, a Friday night in Times Square, was a manifestation of that.

I stayed around the activists in Times Square for just over an hour, but not much was being done. A few people, mainly teenage girls (I can’t offer much in the way of an explanation for this particular demographic being more active), were taping posters to lamp posts, but by the next night they were gone — removed either by the police, the public, or the stiff breeze that whipped up the next morning (a morning that brought newspapers with no mention of “Cover the Night”). The only story was that there was no story, with the Chicago Tribune calling it “the burnout of a social media meteor” in its headline. Burnout is a fine summation of what occurred — or rather, did not occur — at Times Square, across the nation and across the world.

The fact that little to no coverage made the newsstands the following day shows that mainstream media outlets figured people had forgotten or weren’t interested anymore. The next organization looking to make a similar impact to what Invisible Children did in early March won’t consign to oblivion what occurred on people’s screens that week; they will pore over what happened with Kony 2012 and attempt to figure out how to turn all those millions of hits into success that goes beyond merely creating a social media phenomenon. For the rest of us, it’s back to watching dogs on skateboards.







