Down the Pro-Ana Rabbit Hole

Anorexia is not new. It is not new to the internet and it is certainly not new to society. The cultural awareness of Anorexia had led to a situation where often when one hears the words Eating Disorder (ED) they think Anorexia. In fact there are many types of ED, the term itself leaves the definition open to any ‘abnormal’ eating patterns to be considered disordered. There has, however, always been what I like to call the ‘Golden Triumvirate’ of EDs, Anorexia, Bulimia and Compulsive (or Binge) Eating Disorder. Anorexia, in particular, has been publicly part of our culture since the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s. This is largely attributed to two things. Firstly, the move of Anorexia from solely a medical condition to the acknowledgement of something psychological, which is attributed to Hilde Bruch who published The Golden Cage: The Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa in 1978. Secondly, Karen Carpenter’s death in 1983 from heart failure attributed to her long term suffering of anorexia. Carpenter’s death was the first time someone in the public eye died from such a secretive, and largely (even now) misunderstood illness. Carpenter’s death was so significant to Anorexia that Wikipedia has a section on Carpenter’s death in it’s ‘History of Anorexia Nervosa’ page. As a result of Carpenter’s death Anorexia moved from a very private illness to a public cause. There now exists thousands of books (medical, psychological and personal memoirs) about the illness, there are support groups, ED units in hospitals and although it is not enough, and probably will never be enough, Anorexia has been in the public eye for many years and now (sadly) it has formed a part of our cultural history.

As the topic of Anorexia is in our society already, the conversation in the news and media on Anorexia ebbs and flows depending on what is happening in the world. The internet is no different in this regard. By 2001 newspapers and magazines were covering the disturbing trend of ‘Pro-Ana’ and ‘Pro-Mia’ websites. To contextualise the importance of 2001 for the internet’s history, it was the end of the ‘Dot-Com’ Bubble, it was early in the internet’s now rich history, but that year was to be the defining moment of the internet’s development.

It comes as no surprise now that the internet has always, and probably will always, be a haven for the dark, the dangerous and the unhealthy, the internet in its purest form is uncensored, and uncensored topics will always cover that which many people see as insidious. But by July 2001 the public outcry at what we now accept as ‘the darkside’ of internet culture was reaching fever pitch with Pro-Ana sites facing their first experience under the media microscope as journalists and experts condemned the effect that these sites would have on people already suffering from Anorexia and those that were at risk of developing Anorexia as a result of these sites. Yahoo! was the first battlefield, by July 30th 2001 Yahoo! had taken down over one-hundred Pro-Ana sites. Pro-Ana sites that survived the purge either by going under the radar or using different means of hosting and creating, began to carry warnings, telling users in advance what the content posted would be or they began to carry links to pro-recovery sites which resulted in some success. This was as a direct result of the media and political pressure on companies like Yahoo!.

By 2007, much like the real societal path of Anorexia, interest and outrage at Pro-Ana websites had ebbed and flowed. For some the lack of outcry meant that the methods were working and that the Pro-Ana websites were being systematically removed. They weren’t. Instead there was a second explosion of Pro-Ana blogs and social media pages. ‘Thinspo’ (images/videos/quotes that inspire viewers to stay thin) became trending hashtags, fan pages on Facebook were full of Thinspo content and the blogs grew and grew. The proliferation of blogs, in particular, allowed sufferers to be heard more, they bit back and spoke of getting ‘support’ or ‘understanding’ from fellow sufferers, all of which could be considered positive. I have no doubt that visitors to these sites gain comfort, the desire to know you are not alone is one of the main facets of the human condition. We are, by our very nature, social creatures. There was a certain AA mentality, the idea that they were sharing and helping each other. My problem was and is, is that an AA meeting is not held in a bar, it is held with alcoholics, but the leader of the group does not throw pictures of alcohol up onto large bulletin boards with quotes like ‘Nothing feels as good as being drunk’ because that would be counter-productive and unhealthy. Much like the support that is given and received on Pro-Ana sites.

The reason ‘Pro-Ana’ is back in the news has to do with the growth not only of social media but of unique sites like Tumblr and Pinterest. Pinterest is a fascinating site, essentially it’s online scrap-booking. The majority of Pinterest users are women, the most common boards are wedding boards, recipe boards and cute animal boards. It’s a lovely site and as a user myself I’ve found it very colorful, easy to use and creative. The flip side is it had an almost overwhelming amount of Pro-Ana content. Similarly to Yahoo! before it, when the media attention got too much Pinterest banned the use of self-harm including (but not limited to) Pro-Ana or Thinspo boards. It followed Tumblr who worked with the National Eating Disorders Association in the US to change Tumblr’s user policy to reflect that self-harm promotion was not permitted. Tumblr had followed Facebook who also worked with the NEDA to change it’s Terms of Service to stop the proliferation of Pro-Ana content.

I had hoped to end this blog here. I had hoped to say ‘Tra-lah-lah all is right with the world’ but no. Already, there is a move of Pro-Ana content away from places like Tumblr and Pinterest to Instagram, a photo sharing site. As with the first wave of Pro-Ana content that gained notoriety in 2001 we are now in the second phase. Censorship is considered the enemy of the internet. Yet, is what’s happening with Pinterest and Tumblr censorship? No. They are privately owned sites that can do whatever the hell they want as long as they make you aware they’re doing it. There might, however be a larger problem then internet censorship; by removing Pro-Ana content from well known sites the risk is that Pro-Ana will be pushed underground. This is no different to what happened during the first wave of Pro-Ana sites, or even what has happened for years in society itself. There is always an ebb and a flow. Interest wanes in the topic of Anorexia because society does not want to acknowledge the larger problem: that society is partly responsible. Thinness is considered the height of physical attraction, movie stars, television stars, models and musicians are pressured to stay thin or get thin and when someone breaks apart from the ‘norm’ in music or fashion it’s all anyone can talk about. Anorexia has reached the level of awareness in society not only because it is considered to be the most dangerous of ED’s but because it is the most visible, and let’s face it most understandable. The diet industry in the US alone is worth $59.7 billion, because people want to be thin, or thinner. Yet bulimia which is widely practiced skates under the radar. There are, as already mentioned Pro-Mia sites online, yet in researching this article, news and media coverage of them was limited to an aside or an ‘as well as Pro-Ana’. I won’t go into societies complete blindness when it comes to the very real issue of compulsive over-eating.

Pro-Ana sites and content will never fully disappear, especially not in a world where facebook status updates about what you had for dinner, or blogs that allow you to fully and anonymously express yourself exist. No one wants to shut the internet down, so what do we do? We start outside and work in. In the 29 years since Karen Carpenter has died progress has been made. Anorexia is no longer referred to as ‘the slimmers disease’ or considered ‘a diet gone too far’ yet society had stagnated. The discussion of EDs is cyclical, it is the same telling over and over again of the causes and effects of EDs. Fingers are pointed at the fashion industry or models or celebrities who are too thin. The internet is no different, there are over-reactions and there are under-reactions, there are never simply, reactions. I have no solution for the proliferation of Pro-Ana sites, or even EDs in general. There is no quick fix. There is no doubt though that the internet is a microcosm of global society and the path that the recent reaction to Pro-Ana sites has mirrored societies; outrage, action and finally amnesia. We forget that this is not just about food, not just about thinness it is about society, internet society and global society.

The internet was created to forge a new society, one where information could be gained and shared, there was and is, a utopic vision for the internet, the problem is we took all of societies bullshit with us.

Kony 2012: Saving the world one viral video at a time?

Following on from my piece on the rise and fall of Lana Del Rey (LDR) I now turn my attention to another ‘rise and fall’ story. Kony 2012 was, much in the same way as LDR, the very best and the very worst of the Internet. Kony 2012 became a cause celebre of the Internet with people sharing the video endlessly on social networks and extoling people to ‘DO THE RIGHT THING’. I must admit it was refreshing for me to see in amongst the cute cat pictures and ‘OMG’ status updates, people taking an interest in something other than themselves. I should have known it was too good to be true. 

If you’re sitting there, wondering who or what Kony is, then I will do my best to give you a very limited history lesson, although if you don’t know who he is I would be more concerned about the fact that you’ve clearly been living under a rock with mole people for the last month. Joseph Kony is the leader of the ‘Lord Resistance Army’ (LRA), which came to notice sometime around 1987. It is important to note that the creation of the LRA came following power struggles and wars between Milton Obote andIdi Amin following Uganda gaining it’s independence from Britain in 1962. The goal of the LRA is supposedly to overthrow the current Uganda government and establish a theocratic state based on the Judeo-Christian ‘Ten-Commandments’ and the Acholi tradition. Kony and the LRA aim to consistently undermine the government of Uganda and will use any methods to achieve this including but not limiting to the attacking of civilians, destroying homes and mutilating bodies.

Not that all of this isn’t horrific enough but what Kony is probably most well known for and what the Kony 2012 video focuses on is the creation of child soldiers. For the LRA these children are often made commit unspeakable acts against their families first and then throughout their time as child soldiers. There are many reasons why child soldiers are used (with just a few listed here). Child soldiers are not a new phenomenon they have been used predominantly in Central Africa for decades. Joseph Kony is not a new phenomenon either. For many people it was the first time hearing his name, but for the international community at large his name and the unspeakable horrors he has committed in Central Africa has been heard many times before. The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigated the situation in Uganda beginning in 1987, the investigation culminated in 2005 with the ICC issuingarrest warrants for Joseph Kony, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Vincent Otti, all members of the LRA. 

That was 2005, now seven years ago. Despite the international profile of Kony, he still has not been caught. The Kony 2012 campaign sought to stop that. Its main goal was to spread the word about Kony and to hopefully use the power of people and social media to pressure international governments and organizations to catch Kony and bring him to justice. It was very noble. The video ended with a plea to spread the Kony 2012 message, to get involved, to change the world, to use social media for something other than cat pictures, to make a difference. 

Almost instantly the video went viral, released on March 5, 2012 as of today (April 2, 2012) it has 86,552,094 hits on YouTube. People tweeted, facebooked, Google+ (well a limited amount G+ it), generally they spread it around their friends, their followers, their families. The overwhelming point of the video was that we could change this. That simply by making other people more aware of Kony we could cause governments to push for his arrest, help the Ugandan people recover and most importantly help child soldiers. 

Almost as instantly the backlash occurred. For me, it began with a simple status update from one of my friends positing a map and asking all those who posted the Kony 2012 video to point out Uganda on a map. It was a fair point. For most people, twenty-seven minutes before they watched the Kony video they didn’t care about and had no idea where Uganda was. My immediate question was, why does it matter? Is it a case that unless you’ve been aware the whole time you cannot get involved at a later stage? Is that how revolutions work? Did the Arab Spring only begin and end with fifty people who had been involved from the beginning? Has any revolution ever worked like that? No. No it has not. I had to wonder why the backlash? Why is there never any outcry about the endless ‘Just had worst day ever’ statuses or ‘Oh it’s so sunny out, tanning FTW.’ Do people only get upset when people post stuff they don’t believe in? Or post stuff to be cool? That’s all social media is. That’s all Facebook is, Twitter is, Google+ is. Almost all the interactions that are deemed ‘social media’ can fall into one simple cry; ‘Look at me!’ That’s it. We all do it and I assure you I’m just as guilty as you are. 

The immediate backlash, the one that made meme’s of Carl Weathers (although some of them we’re pretty hilarious) is so typical of the cynicism available on the Internet. I understood the point some people were making, which was, until half an hour ago, you didn’t care, why do you care now? Or the, at that stage very quiet, protesting of human rights groups and organizations that the Kony 2012 campaign was taking something very complicated and reducing it into a viral video designed to pluck at people’s heart strings. It was blindsiding people with the directors cute innocent little boy and causing them not to ask the pertinent question like, ‘Why should we send foreign armies into countries they have no right to be in?’ and ‘What about the role of the Uganda government and the unqualified support that Kony 2012 was offering them?’ 

What followed the immediate backlash, one which I would call a knee-jerk reaction based on cynicism, followed an actual backlash based on real facts and worries, expressed here. The Visible Children tumblr dissected the group’s financials, its involvement with the Ugandan government and the wealth of incorrect information in the Kony 2012 video. This backlash attempted to point out the flaws in supporting Kony 2012 at the expensive of groups like Amnesty International, War Child and AMREF to name but a few. This is the type of backlash I can get behind. One that points out the glaring problems in the Kony 2012 campaign and the problems in the Invisible Children organization. A lot of the information out there was well reasoned, well researched and underlined that there are many organizations working in Uganda and elsewhere in Central Africa to stop Kony and his ilk, without the shadow of dubious practices that lingers over Invisible Children. 

What happened next in the Kony 2012 saga could not have been predicted by anyone. Jason Russell, the co-founder of Invisible Children and star of the Kony 2012 video suffered a very public melt down. I am not a doctor, so I will not comment on why or how, but according to the Invisible Children statement, the weeks following the release of the Kony 2012 video had taken a ‘severe emotional toll’ on Russell which manifested itself in his very public breakdown. There is a video of his breakdown available online**. Russell’s breakdown diverted attention away from Kony 2012 both the negative and the positive, and much of what has been said about Kony in recent weeks has been confined to discussing Russell’s breakdown and not Kony himself.

I compared the rise and fall of Kony to the rise and fall of Lana Del Rey earlier and I stand by this comparison. Although Del Rey’s fall from grace, for me, had nothing to do with Del Rey herself and everything to do with the Internet, Kony 2012 is slightly different. There was cause for the backlash, and only time will tell whether Invisible Children and the Kony 2012 campaign will recover. I would imagine it won’t. The lasting legacy of Kony 2012 will be deficiencies in Invisible Children as a charity and Russell’s breakdown. Lost amongst the shuffle is the child soldiers and the victims of horrific atrocities not only in Central Africa but all over the world. Kony 2012 has something else to offer though. Hopefully it will help the likes of Amnesty and other high-profile human rights organizations see how they can connect with a wider audience. It should not be the case that you need a flashy video to get people to care about other Human beings, but we live in the age of the internet, with so much content available online, charities and rights organizations need something to put them ahead of the curve, even if it is flash. It’s not just organizations though that can learn something from the Kony 2012 campaign. In Ireland, Eamon Gilmore (who is Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs) announced that he and the Irish people strongly support bringing Joseph Kony to justice. I can assure you, he did not make the announcement without the Kony 2012 campaign, either by directly watching the video or simply by reading the endless emails and letters from constituents urging him to do something, after they themselves watched the video. 

This should be the lasting legacy of the Kony 2012. It is good to be aware of charities intentions, of their financials and their financial backers, it is absolutely necessary to ensure you give to only accredited charities that give your money directly to the people they and you want to help. Given the concerns raised about Invisible Children I myself would be reluctant to support the charity and that is fine given the concerns over how Invisible Children handles itself. What is not ok is to forget about the impact that one single twenty-seven minute video had on the internet. Yet, that is exactly what is happening, when was the last time you heard Kony mentioned without Russell’s breakdown or a meme being produced in the same sentence? It’s been a while for me. 

For those of you who watched the Kony 2012 campaign video and felt moved to action, then continue it. You do not need Invisible Children to highlight the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony. You do not need it to be popular in order to get involved in human rights or global politics. If you want to do something, then do something. For those who watched the Kony 2012 and felt moved to mockery and cynicism even without knowing of the problems with the Invisible Children organization then there’s nothing I can do for you. Continue to upload your memes, your facebook status void of anything worthwhile and continue to tweet insults to celebrities on twitter. Honestly, you have my blessing, the Internet is nothing without the freedom to do what you want. For those of you who are unsure now about Invisible Children and Kony because of what has come to light, I urge you to contact one of the many worthwhile organizations listed throughout this post and see what you can do to help. It’s important we remember the legacy of Kony 2012 not as one mans breakdown or one organization’s dubious dealing, but as a period of time where for once in the Western World social media was actually being used for what it was created for; change. 

The best and the worst of the internet still reminds me of the best and the worst of the human spirit, just funnier.  

**This blog will not link to something which is a very private breakdown happening in public, out of respect to all of those with mental health issues, so Google it if you must.