In early November, teenagers across America were sent into a frenzy over makeup.

Two popular YouTubers with tens of millions of followers between them had been hyping a beauty line collaboration for weeks, using documentary-style videos and social media to tout the collection’s crown jewel: a palette of 18 eye shadows for $52.

On the day of the drop, in school cafeterias and between class periods, fans flooded the website s where the line was sold. Over a million palettes were purchased in the span of 30 minutes, one of the creators announced in an Instagram Story. One website crashed for hours . The collection became a trending topic on Twitter. Everything sold out online.

In high schools, eye shadow palettes have become status symbols. Teenagers wait in long digital lines to buy them (weeding out the die-hards from the dispassionate) and then post about the experience on social media. That part is almost as important as actually making a purchase, because palettes are, fundamentally, a way for fans to support creators they love and signal which side they’re on in whatever the day’s beauty blogger feud happens to be.

For the influencers making them, palettes are big business; one successful release could mean a multimillion-dollar payout. (Eager to get a piece of the profit, some vendors sell knockoffs). But the palettes are symbolic, too — a sign that these internet personalities have been embraced by the cosmetics industry as professionals.