OK, I admit it. This time last week, I had never heard of Joseph Kony.

Even though I spend most of my time, at work and at home, reading, listening to and watching the news. Even though I consider myself to be fairly well informed.

Now, like tens of millions of others, I know. Having watched the 29-minute YouTube video (“Stop Kony 2012”), I know that he is the world’s most wanted war criminal, wanted for kidnapping thousands of children, using them as sex slaves and soldiers who were forced to kill and maim during a brutal rebellion, mostly in Uganda. Kony is still at large, hidden in an impenetrable jungle in Congo.

So now I know, which was kind of the point. The video is part of a new-age international activist campaign with the goal of bringing Kony to justice by the end of this year. All the levers of social media are used to turn Kony into a household name and create political pressure in the West to force his capture.

It’s not news to everyone. “I first heard about Joseph Kony when I was 14. Now I’m 39,” said George Bugadu of Portland, who was born in Congo. “I was so surprised last week to see everyone suddenly talking about Joseph Kony. It just shows that the world doesn’t pay attention to anything unless someone points it out.”

The video is naive, featuring earnest young filmmaker Jason Russell talking to his beautiful blond-haired son, showing how impossible it is to explain why there has been no action against someone so bad.

But the campaign itself is as sophisticated as they come. There is nothing new about turning bad guys into celebrities: That’s what J. Edgar Hoover had in mind when he put John Dillinger and others on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

But Russell and his group Invisible Children have used everything we have learned from reality TV about turning a nobody into a celebrity overnight. Think of it as “American Idol” meets the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

And instead of passing on the information about Kony and leaving it at that, the filmmakers identify the people in politics and pop culture who viewers are supposed to contact and pressure to get involved.

The targets include usual suspects like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who has probably gotten his share of letters and phone calls, pushing him to vote one way or another on a hot-button issue.

But it also includes a list of celebrities who are accessible through social media like Facebook and Twitter. It’s not just high-minded do-gooders such as George Clooney and Angelina Jolie, either. It also lists the apolitical likes of Justin Bieber and “American Idol’s” own Ryan Seacrest (who tweeted to his followers March 7, “Was getting to sleep last night and saw ur tweets about #stopKony … watched in bed, was blown away. If u haven’t seen yet” and provided the link.)

This is no accident. Bieber and Seacrest have access to an audience that most political activists will never get near. I heard about this video from my wife, who got the link from a friend, who got it from her teenage daughter. These networks have a way of getting the attention of people who would not otherwise be paying attention.

Including me. When I heard about the video, I ran Kony’s name through a trusted source, The New York Times archive. The newspaper I have looked at, in print or online, every day of my adult life has written dozens of stories about Kony. Somehow, this video, more propaganda than journalism, penetrated my consciousness while the newspaper did not.

Critics, and there are plenty of them, will say it’s because the film is misleading. The film does not make clear that Kony’s crimes took place a half-dozen years ago, and that blaming him for all that’s wrong in Uganda or central Africa is overly simplistic. The film divides good guys from bad guys in a way that lets some not-so-good guys, like the current government of Uganda, off the hook.

But there are also plenty of people who have known Joseph Kony’s name for many years who don’t mind the attention he’s finally getting.

“Since 1993, there have been 7 million people killed in the region,” Bugadu says. “There are 16 militias in Congo right now (including Kony’s). They are killing people right now.”

Bugadu hopes that if the Kony campaign is a success, the world’s attention will turn to other war criminals, like Agato Rwatsu, who has claimed responsibility for burning 163 members of Bugadu’s tribe in a single night in a refugee camp in Burundi.

“I’ve been trying to get attention of the whole world, but I haven’t even been able to get the attention of the city of Portland. People don’t know what happened,” Bugadu says.

Maybe now that will change, and if we have to hear from Ryan Seacrest and YouTube what we couldn’t hear from The New York Times and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, so be it.

Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at 791-6481 or at: gkesich@pressherald.com