f you’ll turn the clocks back roughly one year, you may remember that for about a month, most of your Facebook friends were experts on a certain Ugandan warlord, and they wanted you to know all about it. Joseph Kony was the worst – the posters put up proved that Hitler and bin Laden were no match for him – and he could be stopped; all you needed to do was like, share, and re-post a video on Facebook. And donate some money to an organization you’d never heard of before. It was all very legitimate.

Then, it seems, everyone forgot about it. Profile pictures were reverted back to selfies, sepia-toned Instagrams and cats because — welcome to the internet — you have our attention for as long as we think you’ll make others give us attention. It has never been easier to start cultural and political movements due to the instant access we’re given to everything ever documented in human history on the Internet; they also couldn’t be easier to drop out of once you realize that the stress of getting up from behind your keyboard and doing something meaningful — that doesn’t include putting up posters of Kony 2012 you leave behind for ES workers to clean up — just isn’t worth it.

This isn’t to say that social media activism is pure evil due to vanity or sloth, because there is power behind that instant accessibility: spreading of valuable knowledge. You can incite people to want to get up and do something if you provide a cause worth fighting for and legitimate information that folks need in order to be responsible, informed activists. With that in mind, it falls to the character of those from whence the information stems, and then those who hear it need to measure it by their own standards of morality and legitimacy.

So that leads us to some of the news surrounding the DOMA Supreme Court hearing. I don’t have a Facebook anymore, but from what I’ve heard and seen elsewhere on the Internet, there’s another profile picture fad: the equals sign in support of equal rights between homo- and heterosexual couples. Now, right off the bat, my personal inclination is to give something like this more consideration than other social media causes; this isn’t because I want children in Africa to die or Asian orphans to starve, but because this issue will have a direct impact on the lives of people I know and the community around me.

Here is where we can see that the first steps taken during a social media activist movement are a wonderful catalyst for raising awareness and creating conversation. However, no matter how great the effects of these first steps may be, they’re still just first steps.

What, in my opinion, is then needed is personal conviction and a moral constitution strong enough to continue to carry that message or those beliefs into your everyday life. You don’t need to get an equality sign tattooed on your forehead or wear a rainbow flag cape, but you do need to be willing to make known your opinions if called upon. This past Friday, Dr. Jeff Long said something important at the Vigil on the BSC terrace: as his candle had blown out, he mentioned something to the effect that it was okay because he carried the flame in his heart. Though not always on display, the flame — the belief, the conviction — is there.

At this point, all that is needed from our culture is the willingness to share when called upon.