Going viral online used to be a fluke. Now it’s a formula. One baked into our culture, our economy and even our identities.
One moment, a random chocolate bar in a Dubai airport goes viral, the next, it’s a full-fledged industry. From the revival of UGG mini boots, amplified by influencers, to the multimillion-dollar influencing careers built off 30-second get-ready-with-me videos, achieving a viral moment is today’s gold rush. It’s made careers, launched products, revived sectors. Influencing is no longer a side hustle. It’s a profession, a business model and a societal obsession.
Virality has the power to make, but also to break. It amplifies the extreme, rewards the unhinged and distorts our sense of what matters. The algorithm doesn’t care if it’s spreading a skin care hack or a conspiracy theory. Its only allegiance is to engagement, and outrage is profitable.
The influencer marketing industry is projected to reach nearly $32.6 billion in 2025, according to one report. That’s more than the GDP of some small countries. We’ve built an entire economy on aesthetics, fading attention spans and artificial authenticity. But at what cost? Why do we hand millions of followers to creators like viral TikTok sensation Alix Earle or the newest “It Girl” of the algorithm? What are they actually offering society — insight or impulse? Depth or dopamine?
And it’s not just about shallowness, it’s about harm. The same system that elevates morning routines can just as easily amplify virulent hate. After the October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks, antisemitic content on YouTube grew exponentially. “Death to Israel” isn’t a fringe statement anymore. It’s a top comment posted by viewers of Jewish creators’ videos, mine included. I can’t post about Jewish pride or heritage without being met with a digital mob. According to an American Jewish Committee report, 69% of Jews between 18 and 29 have encountered antisemitism online in the past year. And nearly one in five reported that what they saw on their feeds made them feel physically threatened.
This quest for virality is a societal sickness flattening complexity into oversimplified content and making us numb to nuance. And the platforms that run our digital lives have little incentive to fix it. When antisemitic videos go viral, when hate speech is left up for hours if not days, it’s not a glitch. It’s a feature. Engagement is engagement, no matter how vile.
Take Kanye West (now “Ye”), whose latest controversies offer a perfect case study. In February, he flooded X with antisemitic tirades: declaring “I’m a Nazi,” claiming “Jewish people actually hate white people” and insisting that “some of my best friends are Jewish and I don’t trust any of them.” At the same time, his online store offered a $20 T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika — available via a Super Bowl ad campaign before security pressure shut it down.
Then came his May 8 music video release “Heil Hitler,” timed on VE Day and packed with Nazi speeches and imagery. It racked up millions of views on X even after being scrubbed from Spotify, Apple, SoundCloud and YouTube. A follow-up track, “WW3,” topped Spotify’s viral charts before being recut to censor words like “Hitler” and “swastika” after a huge backlash. Despite widespread removal, fragments continue circulating across platforms — because platforms rely on engagement, no matter how vile.
Platforms often treat hate as content currency. Ye’s antisemitic content is not suppressed, it’s optimized. His platform is his profanity, his provocation, his ability to draw clicks. That’s why even after Adidas, Balenciaga, Gap and talent agency CAA dropped him and cut financial ties, Ye’s hate speech still fuels his relevance. Because outrage fuels virality.
This culture of constant consumption has even warped how we see ourselves. We’re raised to crave attention and optimize our personalities for platforms. “Snapchat dysmorphia” is a real term used by doctors now, because teens want plastic surgery to look like their filtered selfies. One study by Dove, the maker of personal care products, found that over 80% of girls as young as 13 regularly alter their faces online.
The virality trap has left us in a feedback loop of validation and void. And the platforms we live on — yes, we live on them — reward spectacle over substance. If it bleeds, it leads. If it enrages, it engages.
The truth is virality is a drug. It’s addictive, short-lived and deeply destructive. And we are overdosing. On clickbait. On outrage. On performative activism and empty aesthetics. We’re building our world around what’s shareable, not what’s sustainable. Not everything that goes viral deserves our validation. Not every trend is harmless. And not every creator is worth the crown we give them.
This is the tragedy of the empty “fame economy”: We are drowning in content but starving for meaning. Fame today is not earned — it’s engineered. Not through talent or wisdom or impact, but through algorithms that reward the loudest, the flashiest, the most inflammatory. We reward hate with headlines and give microphones to the most outrageous voices, even when they call themselves Nazis or shout “Death to Israel.”
Every share, every view, every viral soundbite feeds a machine that doesn’t care if it’s spreading inspiration or inciting violence. In the end, a society that glorifies empty fame will become empty itself. And if that’s the economy we continue to invest in, don’t be surprised when we go emotionally bankrupt.