One might say it's wrong to say a song has 'gone viral,' just because it clocks a million hits on YouTube-- reason being there is still no multiplying of the song, nor anything spreading its own copies, like a virus.
But change how one interprets it, and it becomes one nicely fit analogy: it is not the song itself, but the awareness of it or the happiness it brings that actually spreads from persons to persons, most definitely largely through the digital gossiping-- a mental viral contagion (hopefully of the good kind ) to match the digital one.
So, internet language can sometimes be smart too.
Yeah, the term "gone viral" is definitely in current use as a metaphor. You describe it as a "mental viral contagion" which is accurate and very much like the term "meme" coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Interestingly, that book came out a decade before the internet got started, and the internet has since become the primary "vector" (to use the biology term) for transmission of memes.
Heimhenge said
Yeah, the term "gone viral" is definitely in current use as a metaphor. You describe it as a "mental viral contagion" which is accurate and very much like the term "meme" coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Interestingly, that book came out a decade before the internet got started, and the internet has since become the primary "vector" (to use the biology term) for transmission of memes.
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