This Is Your Brain On Buzzfeed: The Science Of Viral Content
When cultural historians look back at 2012, they’ll remember it as the year when the Oxford American Dictionary chose “GIF” as the word of the year. The year when “Gangnam Style” became the most-viewed YouTube video ever. The year when “Sesame Street’s” Cookie Monster starred in a parody of “Call Me Maybe.” The year when someone invented a way to replace babies with bacon in your Facebook feed.
They’ll remember it as the year when the obsessions of Reddit, Tumblr, Buzzfeed and I Can Haz Cheezburger — illiterate cats, short-legged dogs, extreme junk food, “binders full of women,” Rihanna, Bieber, the ever-unimpressed McKayla Moroney — became the obsessions of the entire internet.
Who decides what goes viral? Why corgis but not schnauzers, or bacon but not bratwurst?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/11/28/this-is-your-brain-on-buzzfeed-the-science-of-viral-content/