KONY 2012?

It has been a long time since I was here.
I finally have some time to write about something.
So I hope I'll spend this time to write something meaningful.

Many of you all know that the video KONY 2012 went viral over the past few weeks.
And there has been lots of responses given to this video by the people all over the world
Today, I'm not gonna talk about whether is this cause is a scam,
nor am I going to giving you advice on whether or not it is worth to support the cause.

I just wanna talk about an attitude that most of the people have now.
TAKE THINGS FOR GRANTED.
Most people pass this video on by just watching the 30 mins documentary about Joseph Kony.
How many of them really go in depth and understand the "real cause" behind,
and what are the possible flaws of this movement held by Invisible Children?

This thought of mine was inspired by Wong Fu Productions.
They did not jump into conclusion and support the cause immediately as they know being a celebrity they will be influencing more people than they could ever imagine.
They wrote and posted their view on this issue. You can read it here if you are interested.

The main thing is not what KONY2012 is about.
It's the attitude that people nowadays are having.
Things are becoming a trend.

Just ask yourself a few questions:
Do you remember how many causes you have been supporting throughout your internet life?
Do you remember what are the causes that you have joined?
How many of you are still being active with those causes now and updating yourself about it?

We take things for granted.
We take for granted that the information given to us were true,
without trying to seek evidence to confirm if the sources were reliable.
Then we perform what other people told us to do, or spreading words that what other people have told us,
without thinking that these information could be misleading and bring more harms than benefits.
In the end, what wasn't meant to be done was done,
and the worse thing that we never want to see has happened.

The reason behind of these problems is the ignorance of the people.
Accept the fact that we are all selfish.

We don't really care about what is going on, because it's not entirely or directly related to us.

Whether or not we support the issue, it will not affect our lives significantly.

We just wanna do something to feel good about ourselves.

To feel that we sort of "contributed" at least a little while other people doing the rest of the job,

Or trying to make a "difference", without thinking that the difference could be better or worse.

To do it an easy way, we just follow what other people did - SHARE IT.

It's not only about supporting causes, it also about other aspects of life.

In Malaysia, we can also see many information about Barisan National and the opposition party passing around. Then the people will start criticizing on the political parties based on what have been SHARED on a particular video/ image, and start to influence the other to vote A party or B party without verifying the information posted/ given.

Being an optometrist student, I have seen many cases where people sharing false information about contact lenses over the internet, and other people are passing them on without verifying if information are true. During the class, I've also came across cases where the lecturer taught us the wrong methods of conducting the experiment, and claim that that is the way that his lecturer used to taught him.

Imagine if 10 students have the same attitude that lecturer has, and each of them did the same thing to 10 students in the future, and the process goes on and on... Then in the end half of the optometrist in the world will be performing the experiment in a wrong way and came out with a false solution which everyone thinks it's true, making half of the people in this world go blind. And then now only they realize something went wrong. Now only they refer back to the primary source and realized what have been taught over the decades were not what is meant to done initially, but it's too late to reverse the situation.

This is an attitude that we all need to change.

Before you share your opinion, before you click the "share" button on Facebook and Youtube, 

Google things up. Look into various sources to verify the information if you really care about it,

before you make the decision whether you want to follow what have been done by the majorities.

Stop being ignorant and start doing your part.

Stop taking things for granted, there's no reason that people should do the rest of the job and you can just sit back and relax after contributing your 1 second to click the "share" button.

That's not the right way of contributing.