In March, Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign took over my Facebook, just as it probably did yours. But something else took over my Facebook, too – something seemingly unrelated. Right around the time the KONY video was launched, a friend and classmate of mine from high school committed suicide.

The aftermath of his death gave way to a hugely public (albeit virtual) display of grief and mourning on behalf of friends and loved ones. A memorial-type space emerged during this time, and as Aaron’s friends filled his Facebook wall with memories, anecdotes, photos and longing, a collectivity rooted in shared emotion also emerged. A sense of community and unity evolved during this time, with an impetus of common sentimentality – an emergence not unlike the aims of KONY 2012.

The Invisible Children movement has received much criticism for its manipulation of fact towards the creation of a singular, easily-digestible narrative about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. But it seems to me that its primary manipulative concern is not with fact but with its viewers’ emotions. The KONY 2012 campaign was created to raise awareness, and in this aim required something to ensure it would succeed in going viral. It appealed to everyone’s emotions.

Invisible Children aimed to unite a generation with shared emotion – the goal being the creation of a virtual community that could then be translated into physical action. This collectivity is theoretically similar to what emerged in my Facebook community after my friend’s death. Both provided a transcendence of the fragmented nature of the Internet; both provided for the virtual unification of diverse communities; both were driven, first and foremost, by emotion.

While in both cases, Facebook provided a platform in which emotion could be shared, Aaron’s death helped sharing cathartically, not creatively. Those who had known him were drawn together by common loss, and a network was born wherein one could maintain an individual (thereby meaningful) connection to his or her own emotions while simultaneously gaining strength from the collective body. Individual closure and shared emotionalism not only coexisted during this time, but by the public nature of Facebook, were inseparable.

Considering these two phenomena in juxtaposition, it seems that KONY 2012’s fatal flaw lies, ironically, in its demands for action. The community that was born after the viral explosion of Invisible Children’s video was undoubtedly one of shared inspiration and sentiment, but by providing a universalized solution – buy a bracelet, like a video – Invisible Children failed to encourage the possibility of individualized closure (like that which existed in my Facebook world after Aaron’s death).

By demanding easy action, Invisible Children failed to create a space wherein the individual could reconcile his or her own emotional response. It failed to leave an open-ended question, and in doing so failed to allow its viewers to engage with the problem in any meaningful way.

The KONY 2012 campaign seems to have forgotten that there is a hardly nuanced difference between collective sentiment and collective resolution. While it may be easy to incite a genuine and uniform emotional response in individuals in a crowd, a uniform action must necessarily be shallow.

Had Invisible Children aimed to raise awareness without the illusion of resolution, a collectivity that engaged the individual to resolve their personal relationship with a shared emotionality would have emerged. Meaningful engagement results from individual struggle – not from an easy way out.

Alex Leston is a freshman agriculture and resource economics major. She can be reached at leston@umdbk.com.