Viral videos^[2][3] are videos that become popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, primarily through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.^[4][5] For a video to be shareable or spreadable, it must focus on the social logics and cultural practices that have enabled and popularized these new platforms.^[6]

Viral videos may be serious, and some are deeply emotional, but many more are based more on entertainment and comedy. Notable early examples include televised comedy sketches, such as The Lonely Island's "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box", Numa Numa^[7][8] videos, The Evolution of Dance,^[7] Chocolate Rain^[9] on YouTube; and web-only productions such as I Got a Crush... on Obama.^[10] and some events that have been captured by eyewitnesses can get viral such as Battle at Kruger.^[11]

One commentator called the Kony 2012 video the most viral video in history^[12] (about 34 million views in three days^[13] and 100 million views in six days^[14]), but "Gangnam Style" (2012) received one billion views in five months^[15][16][17] and was the most viewed video on YouTube from 2012 until "Despacito" (2017).^[18]

Videos were shared long before YouTube or even the Internet by word-of-mouth, film festivals, VHS tapes, and even to fill time gaps during the early days of cable.^[19] Perhaps the earliest was Reefer Madness, a 1936 "educational" film that circulated under several different titles. It was rediscovered by Keith Stroup, founder of NORML, who circulated prints of the film around college film festivals in the 1970s. The company who produced the prints, New Line Cinema, was so successful they began producing their own films.^[19] The most controversial was perhaps a clip from a newscast from Portland, Oregon in November 1970. In the clip, the disposal of a beached whale carcass by dynamite is documented, including the horrific aftermath of falling mist and chunks since the exclusion zone was not big enough.^[20] The exploding whale story obtained urban legend status in the Northwest and gained new interest in 1990 after Dave Barry wrote a humorous column about the event,^[21] leading to copies being distributed over bulletin board systems around 1994.^[22]

The "humorous home video" genre dates back at least to 1963, when the TV series "Your Funny, Funny Films"^[23] debuted. The series showcased amusing film clips, mostly shot on 8mm equipment by amateurs. The idea was revived in 1989 with America's Funniest Home Videos, a series described by an ABC executive as a one-time "reality-based filler special" that was inspired by a segment of a Japanese variety show, Fun With Ken and Kaito Chan, borrowing clips from various Japanese home video shows as well.^[24] Now^[timeframe?] the longest-running primetime entertainment show in the history of ABC, the show's format includes showing clips of home videos sent in to the show's committee, and then the clips are voted on by a live filmed audience, with the winners awarded a monetary prize.^[25]

During the internet's public infancy, the 1996 Seinfeld episode "The Little Kicks" addresses the distribution of a viral video through non-online, non-broadcast means. It concludes with the citizens of New York City having individually witnessed Elaine's terrible dancing via a bootleg copy of a feature film, establishing that the dancing footage had effectively gone viral.

Viral videos began circulating as animated GIFs small enough to be uploaded to websites over dial-up Internet access or through email as attachments in the early 1990s.^[26] Videos were also spread on message boards, P2P file sharing sites, and even coverage from mainstream news networks on television.^[27] Two of the most successful viral videos of the early internet era were "The Spirit of Christmas" and "Dancing Baby". "The Spirit of Christmas" surfaced in 1995, spread through bootleg copies on VHS and on the internet, as well as an AVI file on the PlayStation game disc for Tiger Woods 99, later leading to a recall.^[27][28] The popularity of the videos led to the creation of the television series South Park after it was picked up by Comedy Central.^[29] "Dancing Baby", a 3D-rendered dancing baby video made in 1996 by the creators of Character Studio for 3D Studio MAX, became something of a mid-late 1990s cultural icon in part due to its exposure on worldwide commercials, editorials about Character Studio, and the popular television series Ally McBeal.^[29][30][31] The video may have first spread when Ron Lussier, the animator who cleaned up the raw animation, began passing the video around his workplace, LucasArts.^[32]

Later distribution of viral videos on the internet before YouTube, which was created in 2005 and bought by Google in 2006, were mostly through websites dedicated to hosting humorous content, such as Newgrounds and YTMND, although message boards such as eBaum's World and Something Awful were also instrumental.^[27] Notably, some content creators hosted their content on their own websites, such as Joel Veitch's site for his band Rather Good, which hosted quirky Flash videos for the band's songs; the most popular was "We Like the Moon", whose viral popularity on the internet prompted Quiznos to parody the song for a commercial.^[33] The most famous self-hosted home of viral videos is perhaps Homestar Runner, released in the early 2000’s and is still running today^[27] In the mid 2000’s more social media websites such as Facebook (2004) and Twitter (2006) gave users the option to share videos causing them to go viral. More recently, there has been a surge in viral videos on video sharing sites such as YouTube, partially because of the availability of affordable digital cameras.^[34] Beginning in December 2015, YouTube introduced a "trending" tab to alert users to viral videos using an algorithm based on comments, views, "external references", and even location.^[35] The feature reportedly does not use viewing history to serve up related content, and the content may be curated by YouTube.^[36]

Modern viral videos tend to come from TikTok (rebrand of Musical.ly since 2018) and Instagram (2012) , TikTok hosts short form content in a portrait format, these short videos are often meant to be humorous, while others focus mainly on music, viral videos commonly came from music related short videos and popular dances, TikTok was a large internet sensation causing many viral videos to be made.

There are several ways to gauge whether a video has "gone viral". The statistic perhaps most mentioned is number of views, and as sharing has become easier, the threshold requirement of sheer number of views has increased. YouTube personality Kevin Nalty (known as Nalts) recalls on his blog: "A few years ago, a video could be considered 'viral' if it hit a million views", but says as of 2011, only "if it gets more than 5 million views in a 3–7-day period" can it be considered "viral".^[37][38] To compare, 2004's Numa Numa received two million hits on Newgrounds in its first three months (a figure explained in a 2015 article as "a staggering number for the time").^[27]

Nalts also posits three other considerations: buzz, parody, and longevity,^[37] which are more complex ways of judging a viral video's views. Buzz addresses the heart of the issue; the more a video is shared, the more discussion the video creates both online and offline. What he emphasizes is notable is that the more buzz a video gets, the more views it gets. A study on viral videos by Carnegie Mellon University found that the popularity of the uploader affected whether a video would become viral,^[39] and having the video shared by a popular source such as a celebrity or a news channel also increases buzz.^[37] It is also part of the algorithm YouTube uses to predict popular videos.^[35] Parodies, spoofs and spin-offs often indicate a popular video, with long-popular video view counts given with original video view counts as well as additional view counts given for the parodies. Longevity indicates if a video has remained part of the Zeitgeist.

Due to their societal impact and marketability, viral videos attract attention in both advertising and academia, which try to account for the reason viral videos are spread and what will make a video go viral. Several theories exist.

A viral video's longevity often relies on a hook which draws the audience to watch it. The hook, often a memorable phrase or moment, is able to become a part of the viral video culture after being shown repeatedly. The hooks, or key signifiers, are not able to be predicted before the videos become viral.^[40] The early view pattern of a viral video can be used to forecast its peak day in future.^[5] Notable examples include "All your base are belong to us", based on the poorly translated video game Zero Wing, which was first distributed in 2000 as a GIF animation and became popular for the grammatically incorrect hook of its title, and Don Hertzfeldt's 2000 Academy Awards Best Animated Short Film nomination "Rejected" with the quotable hooks "I am a banana" and "My spoon is too big!"^[41] Another early video was the Flash animation "The End of the World", created by Jason Windsor and uploaded to Albino Blacksheep in 2003, with quotable hooks such as "but I'm le tired" and "WTF, mates?"^[41][42]

Rosanna Guadagno, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, found in a study that people preferred to share a funny video rather than one of a man treating his own spider bite, and overall they were more likely to share any video that evoked an intense emotional response.^[43] Two professors at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania also found that uplifting stories were more likely to be shared on the New York Times' web site than disheartening ones.^[43]

Others postulate that sharing is driven by ego in order to build up an online persona for oneself. Chartbeat, a company that measures online traffic, compiled data comparing the amount of time spent reading an article and the number of times it was shared and found that people often post articles on Twitter they haven't even read.^[43]

The 2008 United States presidential election showcased the impact of political viral videos. For the first time, YouTube hosted the CNN-YouTube presidential debates, calling on YouTube users to pose questions. In this debate, the opinions of viral video creators and users were taken seriously. There were several memorable viral videos that appeared during the campaign. In June 2007, "I Got a Crush... on Obama", a music video featuring a girl claiming to have a crush on presidential candidate Barack Obama, appeared. Unlike previously popular political videos, it did not feature any celebrities and was purely user-generated. The video garnered many viewers and gained attention in the mainstream media.^[64]

YouTube became a powerful source of campaigning for the 2008 Presidential Election. Every major party candidate had their own YouTube channel in order to communicate with the voters, with John McCain posting over 300 videos and Barack Obama posting over 1,800 videos. The music video "Yes We Can" by will.i.am demonstrates user-generated publicity for the 2008 Presidential Campaign. The video depicts many celebrities as well as black and white clips of Barack Obama. This music video inspired many parodies and won an Emmy for Best New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment.^[65]

The proliferation of viral videos in the 2008 campaign highlights the fact that people increasingly turn to the internet to receive their news. In a study for the Pew Research Center in 2008, approximately 2% of the participants said that they received their news from non-traditional sources such as MySpace or YouTube.^[66] The campaign was widely seen as an example of the growing influence of the internet on United States politics, a point further evidenced by the founding of viral video producers like Brave New Films.^[67]

During the 2012 United States presidential election, "Obama Style" and "Mitt Romney Style", the parodies of Gangnam Style, both peaked on Election Day and received approximately 30 million views within one month before Election Day.^[5] "Mitt Romney Style", which negatively portrays Mitt as an affluent, extravagant, and arrogant businessman, received an order of magnitude views more than "Obama Style".^{[citation needed]}

The web traffic gained by viral videos allows for advertising revenue. The YouTube website is monetized by selling and showing advertising. According to the New York Times, YouTube uses an algorithm called "reference rank" to evaluate the viral potential of videos posted to the site. Using evidence from as few as 10,000 views, it can assess the probability that the video will go viral. Before YouTube implemented wide-scale revenue sharing, if it deemed the video a viable candidate for advertising, it contacted the original poster by e-mail and offered a profit-sharing contract. By this means, such videos as "David After Dentist" have earned more than $100,000 for their owners.^[68] One successful YouTube video creator, Andrew Grantham, whose "Ultimate Dog Tease" had been viewed more than 170,000,000 times (as of June 2015), entered an agreement with Paramount Pictures in February 2012 for the development of a feature film. The film was to be written by Alec Berg and David Mandel.^[69] Pop stars such as Justin Bieber and Esmée Denters also started their careers via YouTube videos which ultimately went viral. By 2014, pop stars such as Miley Cyrus, Eminem, and Katy Perry were regularly obtaining web traffic in the order of 120 to 150 million hits a month, numbers far in excess of what many viral videos receive.

Companies also use viral videos as a type of marketing strategy. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is considered to have been one of the first viral marketing strategies to hit the world when Dove released their Evolution video in 2006.^[70] Their online campaign continued to generate viral videos when Real Beauty Sketches was released in 2013 and spread all throughout social media, especially Facebook and Twitter.

• Internet meme
• List of Internet phenomena
• List of viral videos
  • List of viral music videos
• Positive feedback
• Seeding agency
• Shock site
• Streisand effect
• Viral marketing