This article traces various social media expressions during the ongoingpandemic and asks the overarching question: how one should understand,express and practice compassion and empathy in this new context of global– yet differential and graded – uncertainty, loss and suffering? It focuseson the unfamiliar shift of entire populations across the globe from physical,tangible spaces to a virtual, online presence and the consequent issueof what norms, rules and ethics govern this online area of expression andaction during a pandemic. Caught between an either-or narrative betweena display of privileged quarantine living, a sense of empathy for the marginalizedor a downright lack of it, the article observes that social mediaresponses to the pandemic produce a ‘competitive performative compassion.’It argues that such compassion becomes fetishist and results in thevery thing that the expressed compassion was meant to counter, that is,continued unequal suffering.