COVID-19 cases are rising at extremely fast rates as California Governor Gavin Newsom issues another stay-at-home order for California. There have been many influencers who have had large parties over the quarantine earlier this year, and not all of them have been held accountable. While many social media influencers have preached about wearing masks and abiding by quarantine rules, not all of them have been following these rules themselves. 

One of these most notable parties to occur over quarantine was held by a member of the TikTok Hype House, Larri Merritt, also known as LARRAY. The Hype House is a group of popular TikTok users who live together in a large Los Angeles house and record videos for their accounts in the house. Many prominent TikTok users gathered to party that day, and that is definitely not the only large private gathering to be held by influencers. Although the party occurred a few months ago, this does not mean influencers have stopped gathering in groups.

Another influencer who held a party over quarantine was Kendall Jenner, who celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday with a huge party over Halloween. The influencer received major backlash due to this, especially because it was around this time that COVID-19 cases began to rise again. Freshman Harrison Riley said, “Influencers should be following regulations too. People can go out if they are cautious, but huge parties aren’t helping anything.” Kendall’s older sister, Kim Kardashian West, surprised her close circle with a private island trip after weeks of medical screenings and tests to make sure everyone was healthy. She still received backlash as it is unknown how large the group was, even though they were more cautious. 

However, influencers should not be the only ones held accountable for breaking COVID-19 rules. “Even though influencers are breaking quarantine rules, we need to realize that they aren’t the only ones,” Freshman Nika Moradi said, “It’s unfair for people to be getting mad at them while we go out and break quarantine rules too.” Most people have broken COVID regulations at some point as people grow restless from having to follow the restrictions and from having to quarantine for almost ten months now.