going viral

Verb

go viral (third-person singular simple present goes viral, present participle going viral, simple past went viral, past participle gone viral)

1. To be rapidly and frequently shared, especially through social media, but (with retroactive application to pre-internet occurrences) also via gossip or as a collective response to broadcasting or widespread print circulation.
   • 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.2013 November 4, Greg Miller, “Here's How Memes Went Viral — In the 1800s ”, in Wired, retrieved 16 Feb 2022