Kony 2012

     The perfect example of pop activism occurred on March 7, 2012, when Invisible Children launched a campaign called Kony 2012. The catalyst of the campaign was an extremely well-made video, created by Invisible Children’s director and founder, Jason Russell, which was released on YouTube on March 5, 2012. 

 The video, which compelled viewers to support Invisible Children’s mission to “Make Joseph Kony Famous,” went viral via social networks, and within weeks was viewed over 86 million times. This incident didn’t exist singularly on Tumblr, but it’s an example of how a members of a community worked together to snowball a video into a massive pop culture moment. Tumblr users were active during these few days; a search of “Kony” on the Tumblr search bar revealed hundreds of indignant posts and Instagram images through vintage filters.