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You Never Forget Your First Viral Pandemic
The coronavirus is the first time Gen Z and younger millennials have had to confront virality as something that can kill more than just your reputation
Those videos of spring breakers blithely dismissing the seriousness of Covid-19 that were making the rounds a few weeks ago were maddening to watch. They were also an example of a poignant irony: The kids were going viral on social media for denying the importance of a real virus. “If I get corona, I get corona,” one sunburned, shirtless, backward baseball-capped bro from Ohio said on camera. “At the end of the day, I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying.” It was like watching the collision between an M.C. Escher staircase and a Girls Gone Wild episode.
First came the inevitable online shaming, with celebrities and civilians alike castigating the partiers for their hubris and selfishness. Then, the reverb of schadenfreude as people took delight in the shaming. A new portmanteau arose, “covidiot,” to describe people who ignore social distancing rules or hoard scarce items like toilet paper. Pandemic or no, there is scarcely a less sympathetic crowd than oblivious, inebriated students taking a party vacation from their party schools. But watching the videos ricochet around social media and picking up derision like cow manure gathering under the wagon wheels, I also felt a little sorry for the kids. They were clueless dumbasses, sure. But their cluelessness, at least about this particular issue, was as much a product of their times as of their ignorance.
For Gen Zers (or “zoomers”) like these kids, and even many of the millennials that preceded them, a “virus” is many ways less a biological entity than a social construct or digital phenomenon. Inside your computer, a virus can destroy your hard drive, wipe away your data, erase your emails. In the ether of the digital world, a viral process can spread information and ideas (good ones and bad ones alike), turn a random graphic into a well-known meme, incite social change, make someone feel loved and relevant — or even famous — on Twitter or Instagram. It can also cause embarrassment, destroy your reputation, or kill your career. But it cannot literally kill you.
