{
  "id": "going-viral.excess",
  "term": "going viral",
  "sense": "excess",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 15,
  "arena": "information spread",
  "domain": "social dynamics",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "when a whole moves beyond the sum of its parts because interaction among parts creates more copies than maintenance can limit",
  "folk_gloss": "something spreading quickly and widely through a population",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "interaction.process",
      "copy.replication",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "whole.complete",
      "greater-than-the-sum.excess"
    ],
    "interaction": "word-of-mouth.excess",
    "novel_properties": [
      "scale.parameter"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2016 'Distracted Boyfriend' meme replicated across 150,000+ parodies online, overwhelming copyright takedown efforts.",
      "domain": "computing"
    },
    {
      "text": "Rumors of water shortages in São Paulo in 2014 spread faster than officials could correct, spurring panic buying.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "The 1986 Chernobyl reactor surge caused fission reactions to cascade beyond control rod limits in 3 seconds.",
      "domain": "physics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "go viral",
    "going viral"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — the whole exceeding its parts"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-going-viral.excess"
}