America runs on celebrity. From pop stars to politicians, we, the many, are highly invested in the lives of the few. It’s an evolutionary impulse: famous figures keep us non-celebrities aspirational, striving to match their happiness and success with our own. We steal their makeup routines, make their music the soundtrack to our lives. America’s capitalist economy is built on fostering these aspirations in the general public—work hard and spend harder, and you too can enter the menagerie of the fortunate.
Sometimes, though, people become famous for the wrong reasons.
Human brains are not wired to process suffering and death at large scales, as we see them in today’s news and media. We cannot process the rich and short lives of every single Palestinian that’s been killed, of each citizen and immigrant arrested or deported. We save our compassion for the statistics we can understand— 67,000 Palestinians killed since 2022, thousands more injured. 73,000 individuals taken into custody by ICE in 2026.
Another way for us to process large-scale injustices against vulnerable populations is to select representatives. In the face of abstract horrors, we create famous figures. We make celebrities.
Hind
Hind Rami Iyad Rajab was a 5 year old Palestinian girl, who gained international attention in January of 2024. She was escaping with her family to the west of Gaza when her car was attacked by Israeli military forces. The Kia they were driving was found with 335 bullet holes in the car’s body.
Since her death, protests against genocide in Palestine have taken Hind on as a symbol. Columbia students renamed Hamilton Hall to Hind Hall, an act that inspired a song by Macklemore. The song refers to protests across the U.S. and does not mention Hind by name, except for the title, “Hind’s Hall”. The Hind Rajab Foundation seeks legal action against those responsible for violence against Palestinians. TRT World, a Turkish broadcast service, recreated her final moments in a video using AI.
Liam
Liam Conejo Ramos— often referred to as “the boy in the bunny hat” — is a 5-year-old boy who was used by ICE in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, as bait to coerce his parents into opening the door of their home. Liam and his family are from Ecuador and came into the U.S. in 2024 seeking asylum. ICE detained Liam and his father in a facility in Texas. Amidst great national outrage, father and son were released from detention 11 days later.
People have used the iconic imagery of Liam’s blue bunny hat and Spiderman backpack to create viral art on social media. Liam was also misidentified as the young boy featured in Bad Bunny’s 2026 Superbowl halftime performance— Lincoln Fox was the actual actor, playing a younger Bad Bunny.
Hind and Liam are NOT to be qualified as celebrities in the typical sense. They are not self-made entertainers or professional icons of any kind. They are not celebrated for their success. Hind and Liam are victims of circumstance, elevated by meaning-making people into symbolic status—representing hope or despair in the larger sociopolitical context. (They are not quite “martyrs”— Hind and Liam did not suffer, or seek to suffer, for their own beliefs.)
Our awareness of figures like Hind and Liam, after they’ve entered and exited the primetime TV news slots, is sustained among individuals on online platforms and social media—many of the same platforms used for typical celebrity discourse.
To clarify, it is not wrong to:
- Care about kids.
- Care about injustices done to vulnerable populations.
- Take action inspired by an emotional response to these injustices.
It is important to have something to believe in.
However, the ethics blur when it comes to the role of these celebrity figures in our offline lives.
Do you have a Hind or Liam in your own life?
You probably do, whether you know them directly or not. Kids in your family, in your hometown, who face threats of deportation or violence. Does your indignation extend to them?
In the age of celebrity and comfort, using your social media platform to contribute to commentary on people like Hind and Liam is often seen as a sufficient act of activism. You’ve made it clear to your following that you are okay being swept up in the current of national outrage. It is an engagement with the larger issue, absolutely— but an irresponsible one.
Celebrity lets our understanding of entire nations and populations be represented by one kid. Children are the best of us, sure, but so many other people have died. Moms. Teachers. Cashiers. Teenagers. Janitors. Sex workers. Girlfriends. When we elevate children to celebrity status in times of revolution, we are allowed to overlook the suffering of everyone who is less than pure, less than a bundle of potential, who does not go to work armed with an iconic object or symbol to ensure their public visibility in the event of an attack.
If you were shot, arrested, or deported, would you rather be a celebrity or a statistic? I’m sure we’d all, given the choice, want our nations to immortalize us, make art of our specificity and humanity on social media. Celebrities are one in a million, though. You’d very likely be shuffled into a statistic. But aren’t you real, aren’t you human? Don’t you deserve to be a celebrity?
Celebrity status is not the end goal. It should be the beginning of the conversation. Celebrity keeps you looking up and distracts you from looking around you at your community. Celebrity distracts you from your neighbors, your schoolkids, your cashiers, your moms, your janitors.
Nor is celebrity status the great evil. If anything, our desire to create symbols, narratives, and meaning is a strength and should be utilized—at the local level. If you want a challenge, if you’re tired of online activism,
Find your local celebrities.
Let the online celebrity figures that come and go help you find people in your own world whose situations are similar.
Meet your neighbors.
Meet people running local businesses.
Meet schoolteachers.
Meet the kids in your city.
Learn the stories of the people you share your real life with.
Learn how they struggle, how they flourish, how their lives intersect with the broader issues you care about.
Learn their names, faces, birthdays, favorite colors, favorite foods, closest relationships.
Not every person will be so lucky as Hind or Liam when injustice is done to them, to be catapulted into the spotlight and defended by the many.
But if you know the people in your town, you can go to bat for them.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 