So what really is the formula to go viral?
The strangest things appeal to different people across the world. Many have tried to crack the code to attain insta, viral fame. The quality appears to be elusive, but not from lack of trying
Asong has been stuck in my head since the past few days. I can’t tell you what song it is, and I can’t hum it for you. I don’t know the language, neither does American TV anchor Jimmy Kimmel, but he’s in love with it too. Most recently, Jimikki Kammal, a fun and catchy Malayalam song took over the Internet, and in no time, it became a water cooler conversation topic; it’s been labelled ‘Tamil Nadu and Kerala’s Despacito,’ and made its way into flash mobs in colleges. Who knows, soon Ellen DeGeneres may dance to it too!
“We’re trying to make our short film submission go viral,” I remember my friend telling me when we were in university. Thousands of shares we thought would do the trick. Turns out, you can never plan your virality. You could do nothing and still hog headlines, because you’re a celebrity lookalike (think Janice Garay, Jennifer Lopez’s apparent lookalike), or just because you look attractive. When Shah Rukh Khan visited his (several) fans in Pune, and accommodated them in a selfie, the Internet couldn’t stop talking about a pretty fan in the frame.
An ordinary tea seller bagged headlines and a modelling contract after going viral owing to an Instagram post. Who knew a ‘chaiwallah’ could rise to insane stardom after a random photo did the rounds on social media.
As a child, I called her a nag, but I realise now that mom was probably right. “Be different. Stand out from the rest,” she’d say. I’d like to believe virality follows a similar approach as well.
But the Internet has a mind of its own. Open letters are the flavour of the season, but are well, conditional. You can pen an open letter to Google with the hope of it going viral, but a seven-year-old beat you to it by asking the CEO for a job. On second thoughts, there surely must be a fixed strategy to ‘go viral’. There’s probably an agency tucked away somewhere — you apply, they approve and give you a ‘time stamp,’ and you’re in.
The Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen (PPAP) earworm would have been just a regular song, if its performer Kazuhiko Kosaka worded it normally. Who knows, he probably went to register his video with the viral agency, and was told off and rejected because it didn’t meet the requirements. He came back the next time, tossed in some silly lyrics, catchy beats, flaunted simple dance steps while sporting an unconventional outfit, and fit them all into a brand new video.
The Mannequin Challenge, Gangnam Style, Sarahah, Chewbacca Mom, Dhinchak Pooja, the blue and black dress, Salt Bae, and the professor whose BBC interview was turned into meme fodder, are all dated viral content. For every Taher Shah video last year, there was a Dhinchak Pooja and a Bol Na Aunty Aaon Kya this year, to add on to the cringe pop fest. Love it, hate it, you surely can’t ignore it. In fact, as I write this, five viral trends have been killed and forgotten, and 10 others just got assigned their viral hashtags, and they’re now wellequipped to take the Internet by storm.