Why Are the Things That "Go Viral" Usually So Stupid?

I have in the past stressed that very little in the way of online content has ever truly gone viral--much, much less than commonly supposed; and that the odds of anything doing so have shrunk with the evolution of our Internet use (and in particular our increasing tendency to seal ourselves up into cozy social media spaces rather than wander the Web).

Still, we are constantly told that things do go viral.

It happens that the vast majority of such things are extremely stupid. Indeed, I refrain from giving specific examples precisely because the garbage I have in mind deserves to be as little seen and as quickly forgotten as possible, and I will not slow down their deserved descent into oblivion by a single second if I can help it.

And I wonder why this is so consistently the case. The easy, lazy, answer, especially to those whose thoughts derive from the media mainstream, is that the stupidity of what goes viral is simply indicative of the stupidity of the swinish multitude. However, I suggest the reality is a bit more complicated. People are generally online for more than is good for their physical and mental health simply because of the demands of their jobs, and their seeing to other necessities. (This is how they access essential goods and services, for example, as a review of the most searched-for keywords indicates.)

When they are not doing what they must they are apt to be tired--and frivolous--and unfocused--and susceptible to "clickbaiting." The garbage-generators baiting the web's users for those clicks take full advantage of the fact, and when they do so successfully the media dutifully tells us that the click-baiter's content has "gone viral," which contributes to the effect in the manner that telling us a book is a bestseller helps it to actually become so by bringing it to the attention of the public, such that this may help in intriguing some members of that public sufficiently to make them buy copies. Indeed, it does not seem unreasonable to suspect that, apart from simply misreading what is widely seen as something necessarily having "gone viral," some of what is supposedly going viral is the beneficiary of pre-arranged clicking.

Is there a lesson in all this?

I think there are at least two.

The first is that if someone tells you to look at something on the grounds that it has gone viral it is probably best not to bother. What has gone viral probably shouldn't have, and you don't want to help the people who put the garbage up there rack up the click count.

The second is that if you are failing to follow the first piece of advice you are, again like most of us, probably online too much, and should stop looking at a screen. Stare at something else. And if you want to read something, try something printed on paper. It would be a mistake to disregard the advantages of electronic media, but I have found again and again that paper is easier on the eyes--and reading something on paper balm for a mind shredded by an excess of screen time.