Virality through time

Going viral is an interesting concept because sometimes it is intentional, whereas other times virality unwittingly falls into a person’s lap.  For example, the photo of Ermahgerd girl was not originally taken to achieve widespread notoriety online, but was intended as a joke between Maggie and her friends.  Once it got uploaded to reddit and contextualized as a joke, it was quickly spread, likely because it adheres to Kevin Allocca’s three rules for making content viral.

Ermahgerd was introduced on Reddit which can be considered the hub where internet jokes originate.  It then was eventually uploaded to FunnyJunk, a more widely accessed site for internet humour.  These websites can be considered the tastemakers alluded to by Allocca.  The meme then became subject of user manipulation.  Users interacted with the meme by creating various captions for the photo in the iconic “lisp” demonstrated in the original “GERSBERMS MAH FRAVRIT BERKS” format.  Users also applied the meme format to photos of animals making similar weird faces as Maggie’s, and also applied other meme formats to the original photo, such as “The Most Interesting Man in the World” meme:

(www.knowyourmeme.com/memes/ermahgerd)

Finally, Ermahgerd is an example of unexpected content, it was unusual and different but the covers of the Goosebumps were also recognizable enough for a community of interest to be formed around the subject.

These elements of virality contributed to the success of Ermahgerd, but it is important to know that its virality is different than that of Paine’s Common Sense.

Paine chose to publish his argument in favour of American independence as a pamphlet because he understood the socio-technical affordances that print provided for disseminating information.  For this reason, I think that Common Sense was designed to intentionally go viral, unlike Ermahgerd.  Common Sense’s form of virality is more closely related to Nahon and Helmsley’s interpretation in Going Viral (2013).   Paine was not a tastemaker like Allocca describes, according to Standage, he was an “unlikely author,” who decided to publish his “extremist” pamphlet with the intent of many people simultaneously forwarding that specific information item (Nahon & Helmsley 2013).

The virality of Common Sense can be based on the human and social characteristic of exchanging the pamphlet, discussing the pamphlet and by booksellers attempts to capitalize and replicate the pamphlet; the speed of the spread, as demonstrated by the huge quantity of 100,000 copies sold by March since January of that year; and the reach that the pamphlet had, being published in newspapers across Virginia and New England, rather than staying concentrated in Philadelphia where it was originally published.  

Both Ermahgerd and Common Sense went viral, but in different ways.  Additionally, the virality of the two are connected by the two articulations discussed by the media mode of production.  In terms of the first articulation, both memes demonstrate the three modes of production.  Both are modes of communication, both create an emotional response in users and both accumulate power- Common Sense created both capital and power by being sold for a profit as well as promoting an argument, while Ermahgerd creates power without capital by solidifying itself as a recognizable image in our popculture/social media landscape.

The second articulation discusses the spread of Common Sense or Ermahgerd through relations of creativity and production, relations of distributions and circulation and relations of consumption and reception.  Common Sense was creative in that it was an extremist idea, and it was also creatively produced as he chose to publish it as an easily distributed pamphlet.  Ermahgerd is creative as well, as it created a story for a picture of someone, and its production was on an online platform that enabled users to be creative with it as well.  Distribution and circulation are related for both viral topics because the more each was distributed, the more they were circulated.  The more copies of Common Sense that were purchased, meant more likelihood that the copy could be shared between people.  Just like Ermahgerd, there are no so many variations of the meme that the likelihood that it circulated enough for everyone to see at least one version of it incrases.  Finally, consumption and reception can be measured in both memes by the user generated content from both Common Sense and Ermahgerd. Ermahgerd was clearly well received as it spawned multiple parodies created by people who saw the original content, or even those who saw variations and created intertexual variants of the meme.  Common Sense was consumed and reception was measurable through a united public behind a common cause.

TL;DR: Common Sense and Ermahgerd are different kinds of viral, but similarities can be drawn through the articulations of the media mode of production.