The Instagram page ‘Neat Mom’ has a staggering 1.3 million followers and regularly shares funny images and videos that rack up tens or even hundreds of thousands of likes. It’s no wonder so many people love it—the content is genuinely hilarious. As I scrolled through their memes, I couldn’t hold back a chuckle either.
This got me thinking about why some things go viral. Why do certain memes spread like wildfire across all social platforms and even become part of our everyday conversations, while others just fall flat?
The term ‘viral’ has become such a staple in internet language that we often forget it originally referred to the spread of viruses; now, it describes how quickly information can move online.
This idea isn’t entirely new; in 2009, during the ‘25 Things About Me’ trend, Lauren Ancel Meyers, a biology professor at the University of Texas, compared its popularity to the “classic exponential growth of an epidemic curve.” The Oxford English Dictionary first documented ‘viral’ in the context of spreading information back in 1989, with the phrase ‘go viral’ coming into use around 2004.
When can something be considered viral? Is there a specific threshold, a sort of ‘magic number’? According to Fourthwall, there is. On Instagram, a post with 10,000 to 20,000 likes within the first 24 hours is often deemed viral, while reels generally need around 100,000 views. YouTube sets the bar higher—a video needs to reach at least a million views in a week. On TikTok, a quick 10,000 views in a few hours can rapidly turn into millions.
But coming back to the why—what’s the secret sauce that makes something go viral? While it’s tough to predict, certain common traits tend to make things popular. Marketing agency DataDab suggests that viral content resonates because people want to connect with others. When something is funny, interesting, or helpful, we’re likely to share it with friends, wanting them to be part of the experience. This is often how a meme or video starts making the rounds on the web, traveling from person to person.
According to DataDab, the two main ingredients for contagious content are humor and shock value. “We humans are drawn to things that make us laugh, and we love to be surprised by things we never expected,” they say. The stronger the emotional reaction, the faster it spreads. Interestingly, the emotion doesn’t always have to be positive—anger, in fact, is the most viral emotion on the internet.
Memes are also incredibly shareable because they can adapt to different contexts. They often reference other memes or situations, evolving with each iteration. If you’re like me, you might be called “chronically online” for catching all these references.
This works because our brains are wired to recognize patterns, a survival instinct from when spotting a predator was key. Nowadays, this instinct helps us recognize familiar themes in memes.
“If you’re familiar with an internet meme and someone shows you an image or video based on that meme for the first time, it probably won’t take long before your brain starts supplying context for what might be happening in the new piece of media—even if that context isn’t explicitly provided by whoever created it,” says DataDab.
Timing is also crucial in meme virality. “The biggest news stories will also often be the biggest creators of memes,” says Don Caldwell, meme expert and Editor-in-Chief of Know Your Meme. For example, if the Olympics are taking place, your feed will likely be flooded with Olympic memes. Or if there’s rising tension between countries, you’ll suddenly see X (formerly Twitter) buzzing with memes about WW3.
Sometimes, memes don’t reach global fame but instead find huge popularity within specific communities or niche audiences. They use a unique language that makes perfect sense to those familiar with the topic but can leave outsiders puzzled.
Caldwell says memes are like animals thriving in their natural habitats: “If you’re in an African Savannah, a lion does really well in that environment, but a lion wouldn’t do very well in the Arctic.”
“The reason I’m using that analogy is that we can think of the African Savannah as Reddit, or something like that. Certain types of memes will do well on Reddit because they suit that environment and they’re able to replicate and spread virally there.”
