We spend a lot of our days chatting with each other about things we see online, trying to make sense of it all. This week in the Styles newsletter, Wait …, Bonnie Wertheim, a Styles editor, and Taylor Lorenz, a Styles reporter, discuss how coronavirus is seeping into our lives, IRL and online. Sign up here, to get Wait in your inbox.

Bonnie: How was your weekend, Taylor?

Taylor: My weekend was great, I mostly sat in my apartment reading coronavirus news on the internet. I also spent a lot of time watching coronavirus stockpiling videos on TikTok and YouTube after reading this great Rebecca Jennings piece in Vox.

Bonnie: People, myself included, are really getting into it with the emergency food shopping. It doesn’t seem like they know why they’re doing it — just that they should. I think that’s what makes these TikToks so appealing: They gently poke fun at the panic.

Taylor: Yes, most are lighthearted. They aren’t the same as a lot of videos I’ve seen in viral tweets of people ripping toilet paper out of each other’s hands at Target. It’s funny, though, because even after watching a few of these videos I felt like I wanted to prep myself. I even ventured to Trader Joe’s on Saturday afternoon. (It was chaos.)

Bonnie: You are very brave. I hope you were able to find lots of canned goods and frozen vegan meals. On Friday, you and I spoke a bit about how YouTubers are responding to coronavirus. The tone seemed very different.

Taylor: Julia Alexander at The Verge had a great piece on how YouTube had been demonetizing videos about coronavirus, and how it’s upset the creator community there.

Bonnie: What makes a YouTube video unsuitable for ads?

Taylor: YouTube is treating the coronavirus outbreak as a sensitive topic, which is good when it comes to fighting misinformation. But YouTube news and commentary channels are frustrated that it’s made it more difficult to talk about the issues surrounding the virus without jeopardizing income.

Bonnie: I’ve seen a lot of people talking about all of this from a mental health perspective. People advising each other to only read as much as they can handle, dealing with the pain of financial fallout, trading tips about how to keep OCD at bay during a viral outbreak — that kind of stuff.

Taylor: That’s been a thing for sure. People on Twitter will never miss an opportunity to promote self-care and virtue signal. Some of that stuff frustrates me a little. I don’t find it incredibly helpful.

Bonnie: The best self-care is probably to stay off Twitter, wash your hands and listen to this “Reply All” episode. Have you heard it yet?

Taylor: No, but I was out this weekend and heard so many people talking about it! You can’t ever go wrong with a pile of homemade rations and “Reply All.”

(This conversation has been edited).

Five things

Some other things to read on the internet about the internet this week:

• What’s next for direct to consumer companies? (It’s not good.)

• The millennial aesthetic will not die.

• “The day the riots broke out began just like any other.”

• Why are women searching for their cities on PornHub? You guessed it!

• GIFS!