March 10, 2022
Bag Count - 4. Cleanup MC - The Vaughns. Running Bag Count - 41.
FYI — Substack is now available in app form, and the app is pretty slick. I recommend downloading it and keeping up with Philly Clearing that way.
Remember Kony 2012? I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately, reflecting on how it’s the first time I came face to face with the true power — and the clown-world absurdity — of social media. I’d even been considering writing about it. Coincidentally, Suzy Weiss did so the other day, so I’ll just let her summarize the whole ordeal for those who aren’t familiar:
Ten years ago today, the non-profit Invisible Children Inc., published a video on YouTube called “Kony 2012” … As Jason Russell, Invisible Children’s young, blonde, enthusiastic co-founder, explained… Kony… was an elusive, Ugandan warlord and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army and he was terrorizing northern Uganda, capturing girls, turning them into sex slaves, and turning boys into child soldiers. There were montages of facially mutilated Ugandan people, and then other ones of kids dancing, slick graphics, a million jump cuts, a heart-tugging soundtrack including songs by Mumford & Sons and Nine Inch Nails, and a boy named Jacob weeping for his dead brother.
The video took Facebook and Twitter by storm, and for a few weeks, it buzzed around the brains of middle and high school students nationwide. Many of us begged our parents to buy us Kony 2012 gear, the proceeds of which were to be used to stop the warlord in his tracks.
But it wasn’t long before we all learned that relatively little of our bracelet money was being used to help the cause in any meaningful sense, and that, in fact, “the cause” was quite detached from on-the-ground realities in Uganda. We had been sold a shoddy narrative by a charismatic nonprofit leader, who was later involuntarily detained after vandalizing property in San Diego… in the nude. The more we learned, the worse it got. Kony 2012 went from moral crusade to cringey meme, the movement’s energy dissipating just as fast as it had spawned.
That said, Weiss makes an important point in her piece:
The original impulse we felt in my high school that day was admirable. The video told millions of American kids that they had a responsibility to other kids who didn’t have the luck to be born, as we were, with safety, or freedom, or rights. That to think you could end a reign of terror from your Chicago or Seattle or Pittsburgh suburb was insane, but that maybe banding together to do good was possible. We seem to have forgotten those good aspects of the campaign (collective action, moral clarity) and have repeated the bad (virtue signaling, navel-gazing) over and over and over.
As ridiculous as the Kony ordeal seems in hindsight, Weiss is right. There was something noble in the movement’s animating impulse, even if that nobility was shrouded by naivety and hubris. So, when we look back on it, we should do more than just laugh and shake our heads at the absurdity of it all — we should also consider how we might use social media, as well as content creation platforms like Substack and Patreon, for “banding together to do good” while avoiding the pitfalls to which Kony 2012 succumbed.
From fighting warlords to cleaning streets. On Tuesday, I went for a drive to survey the trash scene in some sections of the city I’d never explored before. All I can really say is: the magnitude of this problem is mind-boggling. I could spend the rest of this summer cleaning only the streets I saw that afternoon — bringing company along for each cleanup — and I’m not sure I’d be able to make a dent.
Here’s a video I took, and tweeted out, Tuesday afternoon:
Later that night, Ya Fav Trashman responded:
Before long, Ralph D. Ellison, of WURD Radio, chimed in:
I looked at some maps and replied to Ellison:
And, come 10:45 Wednesday morning:
Of course, a tweet is only a tweet, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the Streets Department will actually take care of this mess. Even if they do, it’s anyone’s guess when they’ll get around to it. I’m planning to check in on that location periodically, and hopefully Haigler and Ellison will keep helping me hold Bass accountable. Worst case, I’m sure Haigler will be happy to follow through and organize a cleanup, and if it comes to that, then I’ll be there.
So maybe we can’t fight Ugandan warlords via Twitter from the comfort of our living rooms. But, clearly, we can get the attention of our local leaders this way. And even if us getting their attention doesn’t translate to them getting our streets clean, Ya Fav Trashman has shown how powerful social media can be for organizing community cleanups.
I’m not sure how useful these technologies can be in the context of violent conflicts and the like — whether overseas or on the home front — because such problems are incredibly complicated to solve. It’s hard to band together and do good when no one really knows what “doing good” means. But there’s nothing too complicated about picking up trash off the street, and there’s sure as hell plenty of trash that needs picked up. So maybe let’s focus on using the tools at our disposal to solve problems we’re actually capable of solving — start with the simple stuff, right in our backyards.
Our Kony 2012 debacle was like Patrick Star trying to defeat the monkey-man and save the eighth dimension. Our heart was in the right place… we just gotta think smaller:
Starting smaller. Aaron and I cleaned up a stretch of sidewalk bordering McNichol Field today, a few blocks northwest of West Passyunk. Here’s what it was looking like when we showed up:
And here’s what it was looking like when we left (with bag count receipts):
The baseball and the warm weather and daylight savings just around the corner have me excited for spring, and so here’s this Tom Waits song, and, no, I’ll never stop referencing Tom Waits songs:
But today’s cleanup MC is a New Jersey-based band, The Vaughns, because they’re cool and they’re playing at The Grape Room in Manayunk on April 9:
They’ve got some fun music videos up on YouTube:
But I think my favorite song of theirs is from an earlier record, Tomfoolery, which was released just three years after Kony broke the internet:
Alright y’all, that’s all I’ve got — listen to The Vaughns, think smaller, and enjoy the longer days & warmer weather.