Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

This thread is for analyzing certain memes and determining if they are viral or not.

1st topic: Majora's Mask Creepypasta.

Is it a viral meme if it got as many views as it did being creepypasta. Discuss.

I for one have a hard time understanding exactly where the line should be drawn between "viral" and "meme". Certainly Dawkins' original definition of the term "meme" suggests that they are essentially the same thing, but I know we've tended to go beyond Dawkins' original intentions. In my opinion (for whatever it's worth) a viral video or video series is a type of meme.

But is it viral?

There doesn't seem to be a very specific definition of the term "viral" for Internet phenomena. I suppose a non-technical one is that something spreads across the 'net in an organic fashion.

The search term majora's mask haunted turns up nearly 100k results on Google, which sounds pretty viral to me.

Should we ask one of the mods to slap a "viral" tag on it, then?