KONY Q&A 

Jason: "what do you mean shot?" Soldier: _"they use the gun to shoot them."_ That was polite of him.

"WTF was that video? I wanted to scratch my eyes out!" Internet Historian: "Indeed, now here is the full video..."

If Kony saw that music video, I think he would just turn himself in.

a guy who likes musicals got the world to give a shit about a Ugandan warlord for more than 5 minutes... I think he did alright.

17:11 "What do you mean shot?" "They use the gun to shoot them." Big brains all around in this conversation.

What I love most about Jason is that, in interviews, he tells the truth but also said "But I can't blame anyone for thinking that" or "If I saw that person I'd say that too". Like he knows how to deal with criticism even when it's false.

Listening the historian humming along with the song must be the equivalent of a soldier being brainwashed in a POW camp for 5 months. This man sacrificed his own brain integrity to provide us the Truth.

"What do you mean shot?" "They used their Gun to shoot them....." Imagine getting sarcastically mocked by Ugandan soldier in his 2nd language.

"What do you mean 'shot'?" "They... use a gun... to shoot them." MAXIMUM REPORTING LEVEL ACHIEVED

Kony seems like a metal gear rising antogonist

So When they go to sleep in the streets and it’s a “protest”, But when I do it I’m a dirty hobo.

Kony got rid of his dialysis machine in order to dual wield phones to play Raid Shadow Legends

"The car was shot" "What do you mean by shot?" Hmm, finally some real questions.

They always ask where is Kony but not how is Kony

There was an episode of My Name Is Earl where essentially, due to the main character's innate obligation to fulfill the tasks on his list and the related urge to balance out the wastefulness and pollution of the people around him, he gets overwhelmed with the idea of where the environment is headed and how impossible it is to address by himself. While My Name Is Earl is a glammed up TV show, that's exactly what I thought of after hearing of Jason's breakdown.

I wonder how Frederick Knudsen feels knowing he's in Internet Historian's will.

Full honesty: In 2012, I thought all of these people were supporting Joseph Kony.

10:00 they recruit kids from the audience to dance with them to symbolize Kony recruiting children to fight in his army

That musical has somehow,, a surprisingly high and surprisingly low production value simultaneously

I love how in the musical campaign video they have the audience raise legitimate questions that they just dont answer. Like they literally admit they have no clue what they're doing lmao

The musical feels like something made by the Onion as a joke

You have more journalistic integrity than most journalists, I think. I love how you analyze events objectively, with videos like your ones on No Man's Sky, Kony 2012, and the Balloon Boy.

The song is actually a parody of Michael Jackson’s “We are Here to Change the World” from the 1986 Disney film “Captain EO.” You can find it on RU-vid, actually.

That in bad times shirt is unironically the funniest shit I have ever seen, oh my god.

In defense of Jason's breakdown, I have been there. I was 21 and a long haul truck driver. Way too young for such a stressful and lonely job. My boss pushed me constantly to drive well passed the legal hours I was allowed to be driving. One day I purposely crashed my truck in the desert of New Mexico and took all of my clothes off and proceeded to lose My mind on interstate 10

Your journalism is a perfect mix of irreverent goofiness and sensitive care. really enjoy this!

He really does seem like a super sincere, well-meaning guy. It’s tough to pick on him too much… just pretty sheltered

“GONNA CHANGE THA WURLD” guy doing his best Michael Jackson impression every time he says the line lmao

Jason honestly seems like a really good, sincere dude to me. Just got overwhelmed.

"We're going to sleep on the streets to see how Ugandan kids feel, only we're going to take big cosy quilts and sleeping bags along with food and drink"

Jon M. Chu has finally directed a musical called In The Heights (by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also created Hamilton). So I guess you could say that he's living the dream.

Something that only just occurred to me is that, because the music video came out in 2006, he couldn't have possibly expected anyone to have caught the Captain EO reference, especially young people. Captain EO wouldn't come back to Disneyland until a few years after that video went out.

real talk when he shot those lasers i thought he was gonna turn them into ugandan children

Idk why everyone was laughing at the angelina and brad pitt lure... that shit was genius

I know the Bible teaches us “don’t judge thy neighbor.” But I’m sorry, I gotta say it. This Kony guy... He’s a real jerk!

If I ever get embroiled in an internet scandal, I want Internet Historian to do the doc about it.

Internet Historian "Take this with a BOULDER sized grain of salt" Mundanne Matt "I'LL TAKE YOUR WHOLE STOCK"

Damn Internet Historian really does his research for what is essentially a long shitpost on youtube.

Kids: *Legitimate questions and concerns* Jason: "Well how about we convince you with DANCE"

Honestly the musical actually kind of slaps and you can see how much effort they put into it just to raise awareness for a good cause, all good in my book.

Thank you for making this video. Your effort to clear a man's name was, at least to me, quite noble and effective.

I remember back when I first heard about the Kony 2012 campaign I went to school the next day and rallied a bunch of my friends around to come up with a plan to bring down Kony. But there was 2 problems with that. Firstly, we forgot about it the next day, it never got brought up again. Secondly, we were in 6th grade.

The fact he's singing along with the song is adorable

that librarian lady in the musical... such character and enthusiasm in the smallest of screen time

If they don‘t know where Kony is, maybe they can make him put up Shia‘s „They will not divide us“ flag. I bet 4chan‘s going to know his location in 3 to 4 hours after that.

I met Jason Russel once at a Christian convention before the whole Kony thing happened. It was for the bracelet campaign. He was genuinely concerned about the people there and I feel real bad at how he is remembered.

Yo I'm ngl I'm pretty stoned right now, but that part where they turn teenagers into backup dancers with magic is amazing

I think the point of invisible children was supposed to be more to protect children from warlords like kony, but it turned into stopping him directly

“MOM! I’m trying to end a war!” Heyyyy, that was shouted from my brother’s room every time he played Xbox during dinner time.

The reasons to not bomb the LRA 1: we can’t 2: we can’t 3: we can’t 4: we don’t need to 5: we shouldn’t

Every time Internet Historian goes long stretches without uploading i assume Ocampo got to him

My brother went through a mental break down during a stressful time like Jason, but it happened in front of me. back then i would have laughed along with everyone about him jacking it; but know i kind of get what the guy was going through and how impactful stress and not being able to talk to anyone about shit going on in your head.

I lost my shit when the Ugandan guy had to explain the definition of an English word

There's something about the guy with the brown curly hair during the dance number. He just looks...photoshopped in some of the shots, like his head is moving independently of the rest of him.

So that musical video is of the song "We Are Here to Change the World"...by Michael Jackson. What makes this song interesting, however, is that it made its debut in the Disney attraction "Captain EO", which starred Jackson as a space captain battling against an evil space queen, eventually defeating her and winning her over with the power of music and dance. The bit in this video where Jason and his friends zap their classmates with colorful energy to turn them into backup dancers is a direct reference to Captain EO, where Jackson uses beams of light to turn the queen's henchmen into colorful backup dancers. All this to say: Joseph Kony can now be indirectly linked to Disney.

I know I'm late, but it genuinely does seem like the guy wanted to help. Like, he takes full responsibility for his weird ass stuff, and even says he can understand people seeing it the way they did. Like, that kind of shit is SO rare and it's something I can at least respect.

it was actually cute when Internet Historian started humming the song. I mean obviously Jason achieved his goal.

"MooOOOoom Im trying to end a war!!" just might be the quote of the century.

Met Jason at san diego like 4 years ago, really great guy, I feel bad for him especially what he went through mentally.

"We need to do what we always do; dance!" Impeccable logic. 9:06 - You can make an entire horror movie franchise about that facial expression.

I miss Internet Herstorian helping you with the questions. How's she doing?

1:15 Kony has the smallest ears I've ever seen on an adult man.

I cant wait to watch these in 50 years with my grandkids, great bits of history in all your videos

Thank you for this very thorough Q&A and for giving Jason real understanding. I understand he made mistakes- a lot of things, as you said led up to this. However, thank you for recognizing the pressure, scope and mental health issues that Jason faced, as well as some of the reasons for some of the odd videos invisible Children put out. There is always more to the story. I'm not saying it excuses the mistakes, but instead, it helps us begin to understand the complexity of these issues.

The REAL war crime was that musical

Man, the more I learn about this the worse I feel for this guy, he just wanted to save some kids

You sir are a treasure. Very entertaining and just a (fairly) unbiased source of information, with no agenda about from giving people interesting information. You treat a very serious issue with enough respect without sensationalism. I feel it's a very Australian mindset which our wish our leaders and media displayed more often 🇦🇺

Thank you so much for your research and for posting. It’s fun to get an update after blocking it out for the last 11 years. 😓

That music video was BLINDINGLY Californian

Something that's been really bugging me about this is how everyone just dog-piled on him during his meltdown and spread misinformation. I can't stand it when people pick on others who are at their weakest, be it physically or psychologically; it's cowardly and cruel, and it infuriates me. It's so easy to prod at someone when they don't have the capacity to fight back.

OMG, YES, I thought of the Heavy Rain Jason a bit during the video, I'm happy to see you did seriously consider throwing that in somewhere and the remnant of that.

Jason starting to hallucinate that films were "speaking directly to him" and various voices is not too "weird" of a consequence considering that, literally overnight, huge swathes of media entities began covering him directly, and people who were complete and total strangers suddenly went out of their way to converse with him at every turn. I'm sure most if not all of us here would end up breaking in the same way. Not to downplay the severity of what was happening to Jason, but to emphasize that nothing needed to be "wrong" or "bad" about Jason for a breakdown to have happened.

My school has an exchange student from Uganda whose father is a prominent Ugandan politician. Should I ask her about Kony?

Bruh your voice is like butter

I really like how you are just as fair and in depth as you are cheeky and dry.

Dude you're really good at this. Keep doing it I would love to hear news from sources like you.

Thanks for making the Kony video. Between this and the balloon boy vid are some of my favorite you’ve done, really opened my eyes on those events, i hope to see more videos like them in the future. Also: if Ocampo watched this video, i wouldn’t be surprised if yo boi @FredintheKnud got offed, just sayin’.

11:04 "We're not qualified" sums the whole thing pretty much up

Love the sympathetic approach to discussing Jason and the rest of The Invisible Children here

Finally! My Kony 2012 questions answered! Thank you!

Imagine being at the top of that hill then all of a sudden an army of dancing woke white folk come ascending towards you

A year late, but I want to say something about the Mental Hospital. I've been to at least a treatment center sort of place, where they normally throw them for maybe two weeks. Worst week of my life. I get nightmares every so often. It wasn't even somewhere where the people were the problem. It was the sheer just surreal state of being there. You're watched 24/7, someone checks on your every 15 minutes when you sleep. Wake up at this time, eat at this time, go to weird group sessions. Today we're thinking about how to feel happy. Today we talk about how drugs work, sort of. The 'windows' are made of like a plastic you can't kill yourself with, at least easily. You basically just get the clothes you came in with and you can ask for a track suit at most. We started with 5 television channels, ended with 2. Trump got elected while I was in there... was weird. I'd imagine prison is *WAY* worse, but when you're wanting to kill yourself and you're forced to not want that. Forced to tell them what they want to hear so you can leave, on the whims of someone else. The law says you are a danger to yourself, so now they get to take you away and do what they want, when you've essentially done nothing wrong, and then foot the 2,000 dollar bill and end with the same state you started with... I'm not sure where I was going with that. It's bad.

bro the dance sequence is simply phenomenal. i love every second of it

"wdym shot?" "they gave a car the flu vaccine"

1:00 it is strangely touching to hear you say something sincerely and unironically.

17:09 "what do you mean shot?" "they used the gun to shoot them" (mimes with his hands). Man that's some fine interviewing.

I dunno why, but it's absolutely hilarious the way that he keeps saying "jacking it" and the manor in which he says it. The inflection combined with the accent is hilarious.

The musical was actually very enjoyable and finding out who helped direct it blew my mind

"What do you mean shot?" "He used his gun to shoot him." This is some The Room type dialogue

17:09 *W H A T D O Y O U M E A N S H O T*

The look on the HS kids faces when he starts “dancing” is just perfect

I liked seeing your behind the scenes stuff. :D

Hey...did you know the upkeep cost of a spy satellite is.... ...astronomical?

Regarding his mental breakdown, I had a similar personal experience... My issue was caused by stress and insufficient sleep & food intake over a 5 day period causing a brain chemical imbalance, making me act loopy as if I was on drugs and/or nuts. I was voluntarily committed in a mental ward for 3 weeks. They diagnosed me as being "Bipolar" and put me on Lithium & one other medication which I can't recall. I recovered and was required to remain on the medication and undergo 1 month of follow-up appointments after being discharged. I stopped taking the medication immediately after that and have not had any issue since because I've made certain to eat enough and get sufficient sleep. All this happened when I was 19 and I'll be 41 in a few months.

Whoever does the Micheal Jackson-style "Oooh!" at 12:06 has probably the best impersonation of that sound ever.

My school was one of the first schools to get involved with the whole Invisible Children movement. I saw that whole live dance thing in person back in 2009 / 2010.

"What do you mean shot?" "They, uh, used the gun to shoot them" *BIG BRAIN*

10:49 looks like that shirt just has the image taped on

“Go downtown and sleep there...” me: *thinks about the downtown near me* no thanks, I choose life.

Such a polished creater and channels.