Common Sense vs. Overly Attached Girlfriend

While it appears that many media contents have suddenly gone viral over the last few years with the help of communication technology and the Internet, virality is not considered a contemporary concept. For instance, in the 1700s, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet called Common Sense, voicing out American independence. While Paine wasn’t the first to write such publication, he was considered an “extremist” for his enthusiasm on this topic (Standage 141). The text eventually became a widespread phenomenon.

Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet from the 18^th century is comparative to the contents of viral media in the 21^st century, such as the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme. The Overly Attached Girlfriend meme was based off of a YouTube video called “JB Fanvideo”. This YouTube video was a webcam parody of Justin Beiber’s latest single at that time, called “Boyfriend”. It was created by a girl name Laina who altered the original lyrics to “stalk-like” lyrics for parody purposes. The video generated 1.35 million views under 48 hours after it was broadcasted on YouTube. Eventually, Overly Attached Girlfriend memes were created due to the similarities of the “JB Fanvideo” and an older meme called Crazy Girlfriend Praying Mantis.

Kevin Alloca, the trends manager of YouTube, explained on Ted Talks three reasons on how media content becomes viral. First, in order for content to generate a larger audience, you need “tastemakers” to make it happen. Secondly, by having the audience participate and allowing creativity, it generates a community. Lastly, the content should be “unexpected” making it unique from other contents. These three elements are demonstrated within Common Sense publication and the Overly Attached Girlfriend memes produced. However, their differences rely on two types of articulation for the media mode of production.

The first articulation focuses on the mode of communication, mode of affect, and the mode of accumulation, which can be seen in Common Sense. The messages that were communicated in the Common Sense pamphlet are in the similar interest of many others in the public. Their similar interests eventually generated supporters. Physical copies of the pamphlet were being sent to relatives and families and passed down physically. Such an impactful publication became a big influence to the American Revolution.

            The second articulation concerns with how the media artifacts and messages are distributed and spread through culture. The video was produced the YouTube content contributor, Liana, who did a parody performance with a webcam. While the video was distributed through YouTube, Internet cultural blogs eventually consumed with the memes based off this YouTube parody video.

I would say biggest difference of the virality between the two centuries is that the contemporary media content today has increased the speed of sharing, beyond human capacity, through the Internet and communication technologies. It may only take hours to even minutes for media contents to become viral. The 18^th century, however, required physical forms of sharing including oral communication and print, making the process of virality slower and also limiting its capacity.