Such pieces of information that can propagate and influence our actions can be called memes
by analogy to genes, because they are also a subject to Darwinian evolution. The meme can be
a fact, idea, belief, behavior, anything that makes a good topic for a chat at a cocktail party or
anything that spreads well over the Internet.
It’s worth to change the perspective and imagine civilization as the environment, medium, and
habitat for the memes. Nowadays, more than ever before, our culture can be described as a global
network of interconnected human minds that are transmitters of information. Memes compete for
human attention and take advantage of our ability to replicate them.
What was so special about the coronavirus meme that it was able to replicate to every human
mind on the planet, almost completely consume global resources of people’s attention and prompt
them to irrational, self-destructing behavior?
Our susceptibility to cognitive errors created a fertile ground for memes regardless of whether
they represent a genuine fact or a lie. There exists an infinite number of possible memes and the
coronavirus meme must have individual specific features that made it so successful. As usual, there
is no single factor. The list is long and remains open:
1. Most of the generally shared information about the new virus is true which helps to spread
it.
2. The pieces that are not true (mortality rate, morbidity, asymptomatic case rate) are difficult
to verify in an immediate way
3. It invokes strong emotions. The fear of invisible, mysterious, unknown, unexplored danger
makes it impossible to remain indifferent.
4. The virus can be anthropomorphized and vilified by the journalists who tend to attribute
human qualities to inanimate objects.
5. It satisfies the need for the common enemy. It’s another atavistic human need that unites
people and gives them positive feelings.
6. It takes advantage of the dramatically raising nosophobia, fueled by the easy access to medical
information.
7. The virus related information could be accompanied by computer animations and visualiza-
tions that further imprinted it on people’s minds. Visually attractive statistics and interactive
infographics became an interesting form of pastime to many.
8. It has an excellent branding effect. Comparing to previous virus outbreaks, the coronavirus
name, while not new for epidemiologists, didn’t exist in popular mind awareness and sounded
exotic. Previous years ”bird flu” and ”swine flu” memes didn’t spread so well because the
names lacked the novelty. They contained the familiar word ”flu”, what made them less
mysterious and less scary.
9. It takes advantage of the saturation of people’s senses with high quality passive entertainment
delivered by streaming services with the simultaneous increasing demand for the more in-
teractive entertainment like reality game shows, augmented reality games. The coronavirus
meme satisfies the need for exciting news that affects our lives, incites emotions (even if
negative), gives the feeling of being a protagonist in the catastrophic movie.
10. It coincides with the World Health Organization (WHO) becoming faster and more efficient
in alarming about new outbreaks. The WHO helps spreading the meme because the orga-
nization has all the incentives to be overalarmist (and impunity for exaggerated claims) and
no incentive to provide realistic and balanced analysis.
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