Late last week, as the coronavirus continued to claim lives and bring the economy to a near standstill, Justin Blomgren found himself somewhat speechless. Typically, Blomgren—a handsome, stylish San Francisco-based micro-influencer with some 72,000 followers—loves to post pictures of his trips abroad, hard-won abs, and similarly good-looking boyfriend, Harper (32,300 followers). On Friday, he posted a picture of himself standing on a cliff, overlooking the ocean, with the following caption: “Tbh, I’ve sort of run out of things to say … But here’s a photo showing I’m alive and healthy.” Capping the post with a string of playful emojis, Blomgren accidentally captured the weird and transitional place social media influencers currently find themselves in: still needing to “influence,” but running out of valuable advice to share.

In recent years, lifestyle influencers have emerged as a class of their own. Their employment—many would likely call themselves “creators” of “content”—is to build feeds depicting beautiful and carefully curated lives. Their salary is sponsored product deals and brand collaborations. The perks include free trips, designer clothes, invitations to swanky events. All of this, in turn, is fodder for tweets, Instagram posts and stories, and YouTube videos. There has been backlash, of course, against the too-perfect images influencers are accused of creating, but they’ve always bounced back, introducing “authenticity” and more raw imagery. Yet, the fact remains that they have to connect with their followers and be a part of the current zeitgeist. With Covid-19 dominating public life, that’s become harder to do. Travel, parties, and dining are canceled. Campaigns and deals are frozen. Followers, facing mounting uncertainty, are less moved by images of new swag, and anyone posting such things can easily look detached or tone deaf. As the coronavirus spreads, how can influencers stay relevant when the pillars of their industry are upside down? How can they bounce back if they make the wrong move? And ultimately, will anyone care if they don’t?

Influencers are already starting to see how this may play out. Earlier this month, mega-influencer Arielle Charnas found herself facing backlash after it seemed her status helped her get a Covid-19 test. She found her influence further diminished when she and her family left New York City and headed to the Hamptons—a move that upset many exhausted parents at home with their kids. Celebrities, too, are showing how easy it is to make the wrong move; they’ve been under fire since the start for being insensitive, out of touch, and overtly fortunate. At a time when anxiety is peaking, privilege screams louder. “We’re all in this together” is a flawed, loaded statement when some people have access to resources others don’t. Even for influencers who don’t seek out drama, striking the right tone can prove to be extremely difficult. To err on the side of carefulness, many brands that aim to capitalize on influencer power are focusing on “purposeful” messaging and influencers are following suit. “We’re encouraging influencers we work with to step up and have seen them grow up pretty quickly,” says Mary Keane-Dawson, the CEO of Takumi, an influencer marketing agency. For influencers, this means being responsible in what they post, but also not ignoring Covid-19 altogether.

That’s what veteran style influencer Krystal Bick has been striving for. Based in New York City, the coronavirus epicenter, she’s been staying inside and posting photographs taken in her stairway. “The situation has definitely made me more pensive about the tone I want to strike, writing and rewriting captions and posts,” Bick says. “Yes, I create beautiful images but they go along with how I was feeling that day, and how I’m processing the situation. Hopefully, that provides a sense of relatability.” In addition to her feelings, Bick has been providing her followers with information about donating funds, coping, and behaving safely.

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In San Francisco, Zornitsa Shahanska, an influencer who posts breathtaking photos combining fashion and travel under the handle @zorymory, is in a similar situation. “In the travel sector the future seems uncertain,” she says. “All of our trips and contracts got canceled or postponed indefinitely.” Since Covid-19 started, she’s been focusing on her daily life, posting stories to Instagram from her kitchen and on short walks. “I don’t want to be not relevant and just keep posting beautiful photos, and I struggle with the captions,” she says. “I try to bring a piece of the now, to not be in a bubble.”

For Sarah Assenti, who works in tech marketing in San Francisco, that’s key. She follows many lifestyle influencers on Instagram and notes that many of them recently ran polls asking followers if they preferred escapism or real life. Assenti picked the latter. “I think there’s only so much perfectionism one can take—now is not the time for that,” she says. “Sure, influencers live in beautiful houses and have beautiful wardrobes, but I don’t want them to not touch on whatever is going on right now. It’s always humming in the background.” The “realness” Assenti is talking about has its limits and guidelines, however. You won’t see an influencer rolling out of bed hungover, for example, or declaring they’ve lost their appetite for life. The content, rather, is always positive, if mildly self-reflective, focused on survival strategy, sanity preservation tips, and memories of better times.

There’s also a limit to how much of these quasi-optimistic, nostalgic posts one can take. At a certain point, it might seem more “real” to see an influencer abandoning etiquette and manically yelling “Can’t you save us, Britney Spears?” Juliette Lewis-style. Sure, but it might not be good for business. “I think they’d lose brand sponsorships if they were drinking and swearing all day,” Assenti says. She’s not wrong. At Takumi, influencers are coached and prepped for dealing with such difficult times. “I bet a lot of influencers are suffering, silently, because they don’t want to go to their audience with negativity,” Keane-Dawson says. “In such cases we advise them to check in with followers, ask how they’re doing. Let them know you’re at least OK.”

But even if they walk the tightrope of compassion and inspiration, realism and “realness,” successfully, how can influencers truly differentiate themselves these days? Everyone is baking bread, everyone’s cat-cowing in their living rooms and everyone—if they have the time and means, of course—is turning to candles, baths, and cuddling. Having a nicer set of slippers, slicker silverware, or even a prettier house, might not cut it anymore. Bick admits she’s struggling with creating the type of content she’s used to—gorgeous fashion shoots in New York’s iconic landscapes—but says that limitations have also made her rediscover photography. “The situation has given me a problem to solve each day,” she says. Shahanska already went through a “decluttering phase” and modeled some recently bought clothes around her bedroom. “I do see a lot of repetition in the messaging [of other influencers]; when you’re living in four walls there’s a limitation to activities you can perform.” she says. When an influencer typically beloved for her best-kept Bangkok secrets is pivoting to home cooking, results can be mixed. But, if you do it “in your own voice,” Shahanska says, they might stick around. “Or they might unfollow,” she says. “People do have limited bandwidth these days.”

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There’s also another possibility: The followers become influencers themselves. There’s something about social distancing’s complete lack of context and the evaporation of FOMO that makes people lose their inhibitions and step into the limelight. Now, they’re the ones in influencer-like positions, getting recognized for their work or creating hilarious online personas that bend the unspoken rules of Instagram. A perfectly respectable owner of a wine shop in England has become "Aunt Betty", making fun of prim English ladies. A hairdresser from Florida has started wearing a cat head, entertaining newly found followers. Experimental alter-egos are born. Even professors aren’t above pulling off YouTube stunts.

“There’s something liberating, in terms of online identity, when we don’t spend time with people in person,” says Adam Brown, an associate professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research. “People might feel impulses to try out different identities and different messaging.”

Influencers, bound by contracts and carefully crafted images, simply can’t be that free. The best they can do, Brown says, is “tap into needed resources like safety, community, a sense of trust.” He believes that with Covid-19 sticking around for an indefinite amount of time, the field will grow narrower, as more people will start “congregating” around a smaller group of influencers who can meet their needs. However sustainable this strategy is, it is still a strategy. But maybe lifestyle influencers can do better than that; perhaps, they can truly reinvent themselves in ways quirkier and more honest and helpful than ever before. With a little guidance from Juliette Lewis and a little more freedom from brands, influencer culture may have, in Covid-19, the rebranding opportunity of a lifetime.

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