11.4. Virality and Intention#

When someone creates content that goes viral, they didn’t necessarily intend it to go viral, or viral in the way that it does.

If a user posts a joke, and people share it because they think it is funny, then their intention and the way the content goes viral is at least somewhat aligned. If a user tries to say something serious, but it goes viral for being funny, then their intention and the virality are not aligned.

Let’s look at some examples of the relationship between virality and intent.

11.4.1. Building on the original intention#

Content is sometimes shared without modification fitting the original intention, but let’s look at ones where there is some sort of modification that aligns with the original intention.

We’ll include several examples on this page from the TikTok Duet feature, which allows people to build off the original video by recording a video of themselves to play at the same time next to the original. So for example, This tweet thread of TikTok videos (cross-posted to Twitter) starts with one Tiktok user singing a short parody musical of an argument in a grocery store. The subsequent tweets in the thread build on the prior versions, first where someone adds themselves singing the other half of the argument, then where someone adds themselves singing the part of their child, then where someone adds themselves singing the part of an employee working at the store1:

As another example, this tweet is instructions for how to interact with it (add a picture), and people keep copying the instructions with their reply.

A quote tweet of a quote tweet of a quote tweet, etc. Each tweet has the text "Without downloading any new pics, what's your energy going into 2022?" The outer quote tweet by @historyadjunct has a photo of a woman laying on a couch talking next to a cat with a notebook looking like a therapist. The photo includes the text: "Wow that sounds stressful. Have you ever tried pushing a bunch of shit off the table?". The next quote tweet has an image of silverware messily jumbled in a silverware drawer. We can't see the next level tweet.

Fig. 11.6 A quote-tweet thread with instructions to interact with it.#

Content might even have direct indication for how to modify it. For example, the original TikTok video in this compilation (cross-posted to YouTube) has a song, but during a section with no singing text appears on the video to say “You do something here?????” and then “Wow great job” and “Nice.” Other users then used the TikTok Duet feature to sing/play along and add their own verses to that section:

11.4.2. Source with no social media intentions#

Sometimes the original source of the content doesn’t have intentions about it’s use in social media, such as this cat, whose drinking sounds are used to build a musical piece (using TikTok Duet), eventually becoming the song Nature Boy by Nat King Cole and then with added original lyrics:

11.4.3. Antagonistic to original intention#

Sometimes content goes viral in a way that is against the intended purpose of the original content. For example, in this video started as of a TikToker introducing his girlfriend. Other TikTokers then used the duet feature to add an out of frame gun pointed at the girlfriend’s head, and her out of frame hands tied together, being held hostage. TikTokers continued to build on this with hostage negotiators, press conferences and news sources. All of this is almost certainly not the impression the original TikToker was trying to convey.

11.4.4. Viral for being “bad” or “embarrassing”#

Similar to the previous example, social media content can go viral for being perceived as “bad” or “embarrassing.” For example, in 2002, a 15 year old kid made a video of himself swinging a pretend lightsaber, that went viral and was mocked:

Screenshot from a video of a kid swinging a long white stick

Fig. 11.7 “On November 2nd, 2002, Raza recorded an 8mm movie of himself pretend-fighting with a club in his high school studio, but forgot to take the cassette tape home with him. Unbeknownst to Raza, the footage was eventually discovered by three of his classmates and posted online via Kazaa, a popular P2P file-sharing network, on April 14th, 2003.” - From the Know Your Meme entry on Star Wars Kid#

Similarly, in 2011, a 13-year old Rebecca Black made a music video called “Friday,” which spread virally for being cheesy and bad.

Screenshot from a video of a kid swinging a long white stick

Fig. 11.8 “As of March 30th, 2011, Rebecca Black’s “Friday” YouTube video officially surpassed Justin Bieber’s “Baby” in total number of user downvotes with over 1.1 million downvotes.” - From the Know Your Meme entry on Rebecca Black - Friday#

For another example, in 2021, John Roderick (who became known as “bean dad”) posted on twitter a story about how his 9-year-old daughter was hungry and had asked him to open a can of beans. He told her to figure out how to use the can-opener herself and refused to help her:

Tweet by @johnroderick: I said, "The tool is made to be pleasing but it doesn't have any superfluous qualities. Everything that moves does so for a reason." She said, "I hate you." I'm sure she believes that she does. I said "You understand everything except how the tool addresses the can." She sighed

Fig. 11.9 Part of John Roderick telling his story of refusing to help his daughter use a can opener.#

Roderick said that six hours later his daughter finally figured out how to open the can. This story went viral as many shared their criticisms. As Know Your Meme puts it, “While Roderick tweeted the story as though it were a proud parenting moment, many criticized the story for teaching poor lessons to the daughter with some going so far as to call it abuse and others made jokes about the story.”

In response to this story going viral a Twitter user related this to larger social trends on Twitter, which quickly became common wisdom on the platform:

Tweet by @maplecocaine: Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it

Fig. 11.10 The origin of the concept of the Twitter main character of the day who the whole Twitter community piles on to criticize.#

11.4.5. Intentionally bad or offensive content#

Users can also create intentionally bad or offensive content in an attempt to make it go viral (which is a form of trolling). So when criticism of this content goes viral, that is in fact aligned with the original purpose.

For example, this cooking video contains an unusual recipe (SpaghettiOs as a pie filling) and unusual cooking methods (like using forearms to spread butter).

In the comments, people post their horrified reactions, and the original poster responds naively (e.g., viewer reaction: “When she started mashing her forearms into the butter and garlic my soul left my body.”, video creator replied “in a good way, right? haha”). The video continued to spread as people tried the recipes themselves (link 1, link 2).

It turns out that this video and other similar cooking videos are intentionally made to be bad videos and intended to produce a reaction (see article: Your Least Favorite Gross Viral Food Videos Are All Connected to This Guy).

Saying and doing provocative, shocking, and offensive things can also be an effective political strategy, and getting viral attention through other’s negative reactions has been seen as a key component of Donald Trump’s political successes.

1

The videos in this tiktok thread do not have captions (for those who cannot hear), and we could find no properly subtitled version of the videos, nor any separate copy of the lyrics. In future versions of the book, we may at least copy the lyrics somewhere for future viewers.