Is it really "viral"? I think there's probably some kind of confirmation bias going on for the journalist, where participating in the subreddit makes it seem more popular than it is.The series has its moments, but has definitely dragged on way too long.
Very popular without a big marketing campaign. It can also only be used to describe things that are still relatively new. That would be my definition of viral (or the way I perceive that word being commonly used today).
That Serial is just that can easily be argued. (I also very much disagree with you about it dragging on for way too long – and I don’t think qualitative statements like that have anything to do whether or not something is viral anyway. That is just so irrelevant. To me the average quality has been higher than This American Life, and that’s quite the achievement.)
> Very popular without a big marketing campaign. [...] That would be my definition of viral (or the way I perceive that word being commonly used today).
Really? From my perception of how the word is commonly used, anything whose popularity is being driven by a marketing campaign is about as unviral as it gets.
