Viral marketing, going viral - Dawkins and Hofstadter

[Jonathan Lighter]

I doubt if Hofstadter and Dawkins had much to do with it.  GB has exx.of
"spread like a virus" back to the early 1950s.

JL

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Viral marketing, going viral - Dawkins and Hofstadter
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> [On April 16, 2011] Those of us on yahoo email see this clip described
> as "going viral", meaning getting lots of hits.  Not a bad thing.
> [On March 15, 2011] You'd think "viral newscasting" or "gone viral"
> would be a bad thing.  See below. …
> End excerpt
>
> OED (Draft additions January 2005) has "viral marketing" and "to go
> viral". The first cite is dated 1989 for "viral marketing".
>
> viral, adj. Derivatives
> Chiefly Marketing. Of, designating, or involving the rapid spread of
> information (esp. about a product or service) amongst customers by
> word of mouth, e-mail, etc. to go viral : to propagate in such a
> manner; to (be) spread widely and rapidly. Recorded earliest in viral
> marketing n. at Additions.
>
> 1989    PC User (Nexis) 27 Sept. 31   The staff almost unanimously
> voted with their feet as long waiting lists developed for use of the
> Macintoshes.‥ ‘It's viral marketing. You get one or two in and they
> spread throughout the company.’
>
> viral marketing n. an approach to marketing which relies on customers
> to spread information about a product or service, esp. by e-mail.
> Viral marketing was mentioned on the ADS list in 2005. Viral video was
> mentioned in 2009.
> End excerpt
>
> I think that the conceptual genesis of these terms may be traced to
> The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins where the term and notion
> of "meme" appears. (The OED has an entry for meme and cites this
> book.) However, Dawkins constructs "meme" on an analogy to "gene" and
> he does not use the word viral. Of course viruses have genes.
>
> The terms "viral sentences" and "viral formulas" were used by Douglas
> R. Hofstadter in a 1983 article about the cultural transmission of
> ideas. I suspect that the current use of "viral" is rooted in the
> popularizations written by Dawkins and Hofstadter.
>
> Cite: 1983 January, Scientific American, "On Viral Sentences and
> Self-Replicating Structures." by Douglas R. Hofstadter. (Not verified
> on paper)
>
> There seems to be an earlier 1981 Scientific American book by
> Hofstadter called "Understanding Understanding" that contains
> "virus-like sentences". The exact terms "viral marketing" and "go
> viral" do not appear.
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=RrMRAQAAMAAJ&q=viral#search_anchor
> Garson
>
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
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> > Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster: Â  Â  Â  Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> > Subject: Â  Â  Â spoof of royal wedding "goes viral"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Those of us on yahoo email see this clip described as "going viral",
> meaning getting lots of hits. Â Not a bad thing.
> >
> > http://royalwedding.yahoo.com/blogs/the-royals-get-spoofed-4952
> >
> >
> > Tom Zurinskas, Conn 20 yrs, then Tenn 3, NJ 33, now FL 9.
> > The FREE English-based phonetic converters, URL and text , are at
> truespel.com
> >
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