Is “going viral” dead? -The New York Times

In May 2016, Candace Payne, a stay-at-home mom from Texas, walked into a Kohl’s department store to return yoga pants and made a purchase that would change her life.

It was a plastic Chewbacca mask that made noises like the beloved furry character from “Star Wars.”

Ms. Payne broadcast a video on Facebook Live, then a new feature offered by the technology platform to encourage users to share in real time. Sitting in her car in the store parking lot, Ms. Payne laughed in a way best described as a physical embodiment of the coffee cup mantra “laugh like no one is watching.”

Except people were watching. Lots of them. It was an example of internet monoculture, a few days where it felt like everyone on social media was relating to the same thing.

Ten years ago, this wasn’t exactly a rare phenomenon.

Once “Mama Chewbacca”, as she quickly became known, left the stage, came a parade of others who briefly became “main characters” and earned the Homeric epithets that long outlasted their turn in the spotlight: the “BBC Dad”, “The Cinnamon Grilled Shrimp Guy.”