I was watching someone’s pre-Oscar red carpet show last night from my hotel room in Panama City and came sharply to.

Joanna Coles (Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief) remarked in passing that the red carpet is now a fashion world unto itself and that, in general, style decisions there tend to run in the direction of the classic and conservative.

“Why is that?” she was asked.

“Celebrities don’t want to be turned into memes.”

Wow, I thought, if we have a group of people who command admiration, who rank high, who garner virtually limitless amounts of capital (cultural, social and economic) to themselves, it’s A-list actors.

And here we see them cowering before the mob, terrified of judgment and ridicule. The very rich and very famous have been reduced to awkward teenagers who live in fear of bullying.

Things have changed. Or, better, the more things change, the more they look like 18th century France.