Go viral

Hundreds of long-forgotten texts that went viral in the 19th century are being discovered by a new collaboration of humanities scholars and computer scientists.

After watching hours of these videos, I realized there’s no use trying to make sense of any one of them, but taken as a body of work, they tell a story: the struggles of a person trying to go viral again.

Li Lina, a resident in the Hanyang district, beat a gong and shrieked from her high-rise balcony this weekend to beg for help for herself and her stricken mother holed up at home. A neighbor filmed her cries and uploaded it to the Internet, where it went viral.

A group of girls from Norway asked me why their videos weren’t going viral like the ones from their American peers.

“Once you know how to make a video go viral, it’s just about how to get as many out as possible,” he told Bloomberg in December. “You can practically make unlimited money.”