On March 15th 2011, Jason Russell became convinced he was the saviour of humanity. As befitting such a title, he stripped down to his underwear, strode out into the blazing San Diego heat and started screaming at passing cars while masturbating. In the week leading up to this episode a video his charity had created had gone viral. The #Kony2012 campaign had been designed to draw media attention to the villainous Ugandan cult leader in the hope of bringing him to justice. And while they had proclaimed they wanted to “make him famous”, Jason and his team at the charity Invisible Children thought maybe a few thousand people might see it, but by the end of the week, it had been viewed by almost a hundred million.
After it went viral there was a brief craze in which idealistic teens had started putting #Kony2012 stickers on lampposts across the world and uploading fan videos demanding change, but frustrated at the inaction the public quickly grew bored at the campaign and the eye of collective attention shifted to the people behind it — and Lo, it was displeased. Shortly after the campaign had peaked, Vice magazine ran an article which exposed Jason as Christian which it described as “especially troubling”. Furthermore, it claimed that his charity had taken funds from right-wing groups, some of whom were said to have connections to anti-gay organisations in Uganda. This reoriented the collective gaze from Kony to Jason, which led to his entire life and character being dissected by a million minds.
Russell’s family later said that “While that attention was great for raising awareness about Joseph Kony, it also brought a lot of attention to Jason — and, because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal, and Jason took them very hard…. it’s hard to understand the sudden transition from relative anonymity to worldwide attention — both raves and ridicules, in a matter of days.” After his recovery, Russell said. “It was so chaotic. It was so exciting because it felt like the world was for us, and then at the same time it was heartbreaking and felt almost like a nightmare because it felt like the world was against us.” That morning he said something “clicked” and “my mind turned against me”.