"Viral videos" are a form of media characterized by "viral dissemination," specifically referring to videos that spread rapidly and widely, like a virus, within a short period of time through accidental, unorganized interpersonal or online networks. Existing research on "viral videos" often focuses on video cases with "phenomenal" dissemination power and marketing purposes. However, in the era of "traffic is king" online communication, many video creators consider "traffic acquisition" from the initial stages of creation, striving to make their videos more "viral." Therefore, the development path of "viral videos" should be considered from both the production and dissemination dimensions.
From "Experimental" Spontaneous to "Assembly Line" Inspiration
Production is the initial stage of video creation. With the empowerment of internet technology and the widespread availability of tools, the expansion of the production scale and the refinement of creation have become a clear trajectory of video development. However, the increased maturity of creators in content creation has also brought about changes in the mainstream style of cultural products. The shift in the production of "viral videos" is thus evident.
Past Randomness:
Free Creative Trends In contemporary culture, visual elements have become crucial means of creating, representing, and conveying meaning. In the early days of the internet, video creation was not a flourishing of diverse styles, digital media practice was not yet highly industrialized, and "viral videos" lacked the "wholesale" nature of a commodity market; there was no universal, mature methodology. Early producers were pioneers, acting as "individuals as the center of information production." The video production process resembled experiments targeting "pathogenic elements," with unknown outcomes beforehand. The eventual "viral spread" on the internet also possessed a degree of randomness.
Examining this "randomness" from a production logic perspective, the underlying reason may lie in the fact that the creative threshold had not yet been lowered to a level accessible to everyone, and video production had not yet reached a large-scale, mass-production trend. Early producers largely utilized the inherent separation between reality and virtuality inherent in digital media to alter the original semantic connotations of real events. Textual content was detached from its original medium and placed within a loose and free consumption structure. This "freedom" lacked rigorous logic and rules.
Current Strategic Considerations:
Mature Processing Paradigms Around 2016, short video platforms rapidly became a major arena for online entertainment, attracting more ordinary users and professional organizations to the video creation industry.
The parody and satire of raw material, the application of visual effects, and the capture of subcultures have developed into a relatively mature processing paradigm with stronger production strategies. When homogeneous creative ideas emerge, video processing is guided by users' aesthetic demands into a predetermined "collage" style. The essence of "viral videos" originates from YouTube: it more fully absorbs the entertainment-oriented and highly individualistic aspects of internet culture, more precisely satisfying the viewing psychology of its core user group.
This shift in "viral videos" is essentially video producers directly linking "pathogenic elements" with netizens' demands, generating stronger engagement. In an era of shallow reading, people's enthusiasm for consuming "viral videos" is higher than their enthusiasm for ordinary content. While users can clearly perceive the meaningless spread and illusory content exchange process within the shell of "viral videos," both senders and receivers are happy to amplify the distorted meaning, witnessing the disorder of dissemination and the spread of the "virus." To create this disorder and gain "visibility" in cyberspace, creators increasingly emphasize the application of strategies, emotional rendering, and spectacle generation in video creation, laying the groundwork for further dissemination.
Behind the Shift:
Assembly Line Production and Profit-Driven. Currently, "viral videos" have become "fabricated" in content creation, shifting towards an assembly line production model. The ubiquity of this assembly line production simultaneously activates symbols and culture. On one hand, "viral videos" are no longer satisfied with superficial aesthetic contemplation. Compared to the light processing and editing of early "viral videos," current "viral videos" focus more on generating symbolic meaning, strengthening multi-semantic creation through a large number of stimulating symbols, and completing the reconstruction of the discourse system. On the other hand, "viral videos" drive the rapid aggregation of specific cultural groups. The cultural representations released by "assembly line" production are highly targeted, with video producers beginning to attempt to project group identities, seeking acceptance and absorption from culturally sensitive internet users.
This "assembly line" production process has increased the general "susceptibility" of current "viral videos" to a wider audience, giving them a "manufactured" label. While different "viral videos" may differ in content selection, their logic tends to be unified, becoming replicable and emulateable. The most direct manifestation is the proliferation of summaries of patterns such as "methods for creating viral videos" and "secrets to short video virality" on the internet, along with the sale of related paid knowledge products. Although "viral videos" remain scarce within a specific period, their production has already acquired universal discursive significance and targeted attributes at the level of cultural commodity manufacturing.
The Shift in Spread
From Interpersonal Networks to Platform-Based Node Control
The extension of the "viral video" spread chain previously relied primarily on a network-based structure. However, with the strong involvement of platforms as infrastructure, while the power of interpersonal communication in the spread of "viral videos" remains, the complexity of the spread chain has increased, leading to new node control and simultaneously driving changes in the spread structure.