symbiotic virality

“Do you believe we are in a goondemic?”I remember the question striking me as flippant. We were an hour into the forum—crowded by Berkeley standards—and all the other students had been asking more interesting, earnest questions about language or algorithms.I suppose I could have answered literally, or come up with my own glib response, but the topic was out of scope and I didn’t want to embarrass the professor sitting next to me. I chose to salvage the moment by broadly answering about how “gooning” was evolving into a metaphor for “wasting time.”Following the event, the student came up to greet me. He introduced himself as Steve, shook my hand, and thanked me “for the clip” with a sheepish grin. I was still somewhat confused until a few hours later, when a video of our interaction began going viral on TikTok.The entire question had been a setup, recorded from the start without my knowledge. Steve had deliberately interrupted our academic discussion to say something provocative for…