When social media, particularly visual-sharing platforms like Instagram and YouTube, were in their ascendency, we heard talk about the democratization of celebrity. Gone were the gate-keeping days of old—any kid with a camera in their bedroom could become famous. That prophecy has certainly borne out, as a new species of famous person has emerged out of the digital mists, blessing us with influencer culture’s version of managed access. What began with reality television migrated onto our phones, that sense of intimate and immediate connection to people we really only know through screens.

What, then, does the regular celebrity do—the more analog celebrity, the movie star or the pop idol or the beloved talk show host? They have, of course, remained famous on those original terms. But they’ve also been compelled, voluntarily or not, to dabble in the new media, to make jokes on Twitter or post selfies on Instagram or film a wacky TikTok video. It’s become an ancillary outlet for famous people to reify their fame, to connect with their fans and give them a sense of the person behind the brand.

But what happens when all but the ancillary goes away? How does traditional celebrity function—how does it understand itself—when all it has are the tools of the masses, the low-budget DIY materials available to all?

We’ve seen that strange, rapid evolution as the COVID-19 crisis has metastasized, the world brought to its worried knees by a pandemic that demands withdrawal from the physical world and has pushed us all, normie and celebrity alike, onto the messy meeting grounds of the internet. The results have been fascinating and depressing; amusing and, for some, infuriating. The coronavirus outbreak has shown us both the power and the fragility of fame, its ability to unify us in distraction but also to alienate us even further.

When the outbreak first began in the United States, our icons quickly fashioned themselves as bearers of an important message. The Trump administration was reluctant to urge us to stay home as much as possible, to social distance and quarantine and shrink the reach of our physical lives to a scale least prone to risk. But those steps were necessary, and in the early days of the crisis, movie stars (like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone), pop stars (like Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift), and all manner of other notable people issued calls to do the responsible thing.

There was something comforting about that—the idea that, in the absence of any cogent leadership in Washington, at least some famous people were giving the right instructions. It was oddly heartening when Tom Hanks, sturdy and reliable paternal figure of Hollywood, disclosed that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive for COVID-19 while in Australia and that they were taking all the diligent steps to avoid infecting anyone else, while receiving the care they needed. Sure, there was some grumbling about how the rich and powerful were likely to get better treatment than the many more disenfranchised people who become infected. But for the most part, people seemed to rally around the Hanks family, making them avatars of our inevitable triumph over a scary and undiscriminating threat.

That hasn’t changed, exactly. When more celebrities revealed that they, too, were sick from coronavirus—international crush object Idris Elba, beloved TV hunk Daniel Dae Kim, one of the great hairy fellows from Game of Thrones—there was further rallying, people thanking these public figures for a calm forthrightness that comes so infrequently, if ever, from the halls of actual, actionable federal power.