Throughout the twenty first century social media rains complete influence on impressionable viewers, encouraging them to fulfil a bottom line agenda focused on viral viewership. These videos may not seem dangerous to the passive viewer, however on social media platforms viewers can actively participate in the viral craze by creating responsive content. This at home participation can range from leaving a comment to completely recreating the viral video as a parody or response video. The distinction between creator and viewer completely disappears as the viewership of the video increases. Most of the time the original video loses value as the content is distorted by the viral viewership. The message of the original content becomes lost as the viewers morph the video into a meme or challenge.
The most dangerous example of this being challenge videos. Creators create an exciting challenge for the viral viewers to replicate and conform to the agenda of the creator. In 2001 this started out with the gallon challenge, viewers were challenged to drink a whole gallon of milk in less than one hour without puking. This juvenile challenge was only the start of the viral hazing, the need to belong to social media by completing challenges. As the years went on the challenges became more controversial to ensure maximum virality, like the fainting challenge. This challenge asks viewers to choke themselves unconscious proving their loyalty to social media. Viewers are willing to risk their body for feeling of prestige and acceptance on social media. Vial videos can insight a panic and eventually lead to death of viewers attempting to belong on the platform. The millennial and gen-z would see the tied-pod challenge as a viral plague, the sickness of virality manifesting itself into the reality. Many parents tell their children, “If you saw someone jump off a bridge would you jump too?” however about 30,000,000 people tell them to participate in the world by acting in these challenges. Viral peer pressure subtly engages the viewer by sharing videos and consolidating a community around viral videos. The worst part about vial videos seems to be the ability of becoming viral by utilizing the human emotions of joy, sadness, and disgust. Humanity always finds a way to manipulate views and content to pander to the basic human emotions. Viral videos have perfected the art of pandering, much like how New focuses on tragic or inspirational stories. Although, viral social media has greater stakes then a segment on the local news because of the element of participation. Just by “liking” a viral video creates more buzz and promotion for the video, resulting in it growing. Humanity feels the community need to collectively like or dislike content, following and sharing ideas, distracting them from the actual harm of the content. Most people don’t realize by contributing to the viral collective they are forgetting the individual. Maybe the tide pod challenge started as a joke, but it was shared and liked by millions, contributing to 12,000 calls to poison control in early 2018. Memes are all fun and games until virality enters reality. Works cited Shaer, Maththew. “What Emotion Goes Viral the Fastest?” Smithsonian Magazine, Apr. 2014.
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