page_title: Viral phenomenon
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Viral phenomenon / History of content sharing / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration of the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood”
context_page_description: Viral phenomena are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. They get their name from the way that viruses propagate. This has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population. "Viral media" is another common term whose popularity has been fueled by the rapid rise of social network sites. Different from the "spreadable media", "viral media" uses viral metaphors of "infection" and "contamination", which means that audiences play as passive carriers rather than an active role to "spread" contents. Memes are one known example of informational viral patterns.
context_section_description: Before writing and while most people were illiterate, the dominant means of spreading memes was oral culture like folk tales, folk songs, and oral poetry, which mutated over time as each retelling presented an opportunity for change.  The printing press provided an easy way to copy written texts instead of handwritten manuscripts. In particular, pamphlets could be published in only a day or two, unlike books which took longer. For example, Martin Luther's Ninety-five theses took only two months to spread throughout Europe. A study of United States newspapers in the 1800s found human interest, "news you can use" stories and list-focused articles circulated nationally as local papers mailed copies to each other and selected content for reprinting. Chain letters spread by postal mail throughout the 1900s.
  Urban legends also began as word-of-mouth memes. Like hoaxes, they are examples of falsehoods that people swallow, and, like them, often achieve broad public notoriety.
caption: Red Riding Hood, an example of a folktale
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