This is Please Like Me , BuzzFeed News’ newsletter about how influencers are battling for your attention. You can sign up here.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, many people have been looking for someone to channel all their fear and anger at. This week, influencers were the target.

That’s not to say they didn’t deserve it. On Monday, I wrote about a debate raging all weekend online. Naomi Davis, aka Love Taza, packed her five kids into an RV on Friday, right before the CDC instituted a travel ban on the New York metro area, and headed west. People were, rightfully, pissed off. I spoke to two experts who said this was a terrible idea in the middle of a pandemic — and could possibly lead to more people being unnecessarily exposed to the virus.

I got a ton of messages from readers about other influencers who were traveling against CDC guidelines on my Instagram (where, shameless plug, I am always happy to discuss influencer drama with readers and frequently post things that don’t make the newsletter). Arielle Charnas, aka Something Navy — who, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, was diagnosed with COVID-19 — traveled to a house in the Hamptons despite the fact both she and her husband were infected, which set off a HUGE firestorm. Food blogger Ali Maffucci, better known as @inspiralized, also has been under fire for traveling this week from Jersey City to Florida to quarantine in greener pastures. Clea Shearer, one of the founders of the Home Edit, used an RV to travel from California back to her Nashville home this week. Other influencers and YouTubers have been called out for doing non–social distancing activities like getting their nails done, taking trips to Tahiti, or just being out of touch. This bad behavior and subsequent public shaming has earned them write-ups in Jezebel, Vanity Fair, and the New York Post.

There has been a lot of discussion about how irresponsible these influencers are or are not being, how this is indicative of their privilege and wealth, and the like. I’m not going to rehash those here. Instead, I am wondering if this is a moment of reckoning for the industry at large.

For many years, I have railed against the notion that influencers are not worth reporting on or that I am being petty by covering them because they are not public figures. Many successful influencers, especially old-school mommy bloggers, still cling to the notion that they are just regular, everyday people who just happen to “share their lives online,” and therefore are undeserving of criticism from the media or their audience. Never mind the fact that, Naomi for example, has huge partnerships with Target, DSW, and Fairmont Hotels, among many others. Or that both Naomi and her husband, Josh, make their income entirely from their blog and ad partnerships, and have for many years.

Knowing this, their response to this drama makes a lot of sense.I will give Naomi credit for acknowledging that she is a public figure and that anything she says "is going to be ripped apart." She insists that her decision was right for her family and seemed to imply that was the most important thing.

Ali from Inspiralized was even more blunt, telling her more than 200,000 followers that she, frankly, didn’t owe them anything. “I didn’t need to share this journey/my logic behind this decision/etc, but I do because I want people to know why all the sudden I’m in Florida,” she wrote.

Arielle took responsibility in a long post on her Instagram account on Thursday, writing that she understood she had made mistakes and is under scrutiny because she decides to put herself in the public eye. She defended her actions, though, as ignorance, not malice. She also posted a tearful Instagram story saying she “let down her community.” (I wrote a lot more about her case specifically in a story yesterday.)