It's a Friday night and I'm sitting at home watching Naomi Watanabe perform an impromptu dance routine on her couch. Tens of thousands of viewers tuned into her April 3 YouTube livestream, during which the Japanese celebrity ate dinner, chatted with her audience and indulged in a few sudden flights of fancy for a little over 90 minutes.

Watanabe has held these livestreams on each weekend night ever since Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike urged residents of the capital in late March to stay at home on Saturdays and Sundays. These YouTube sessions are Watanabe's way of encouraging folks to refrain from leaving their homes — they can digitally hang out with her instead. To underline the point, she's deployed hashtags in English and Japanese urging everyone to #stayhome.

In recent weeks, Japanese celebrities and influencers such as Watanabe have started using their platforms to urge people to refrain from going out in order to help curb the spread of COVID-19. This isn't limited to the rich and famous — social media users all around the world have been promoting (and in some cases shaming those who don't practice) social distancing and home isolation. It began to resemble as righteous a trend or meme could be, and it was only a matter of time before celebrities embraced it as well.