If for no other reason, you must watch this video because many people you know are about to be—or already are—talking about "KONY 2012," and you'll want to have an opinion. If you're interested in how to craft a video narrative that gets 55 million views (and counting) online, you have further reason to watch. If you have feelings about the way Americans sometimes make the complex problems of far-off, foreign places seem very simple and solvable—and the ways in which this oversimplifying impulse might actually be harnessed for the good on occasion—you have additional reason to watch. If you have a heart, well, just hit play and see what happens.

There is already plenty of criticism of this video (for its embrace of slacktivism, for some opaqueness in its backer's finances, for its echoes of the White Man's Burden), but it is very hard to argue with its goal: The arrest of Joseph Kony for crimes against humanity.