2017 Hitmakers: Why #Virushka Exploded Across Social Media

They were recently spotted in Cape town, but the tweets have already ebbed. But on their 2017 wedding day, tweets spiked to record levels, the videos were shared and reshared. The guests were limited to an exclusive forty-four, but many millions watched Anushka Sharma glide up in diaphanous pink, towards her dashing, bearded groom, to exchange the most celebrated vows of 2017. The ceremony was held as far away as possible from the crush and bedlam of India, yet most folks recalled the subtle colours on the garland, or the feathery embellishment on the cricket captain’s turban as if they had been accorded a front seat view. Some tweeters gushed, others fawned, some criticized, others joked. The images flooded all our digital hang outs, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Politicians and marketers must have envied the frenzied heights, a buzz they can rarely orchestrate during product launches or elections.

The effects will linger for a while. Some will copy her dress for their own weddings, the well-heeled may head to the same destination for a more clubby wedding. Sabyasachi, already an icon among the upper crust, will percolate into other stratas. For those who cannot afford the original, lookalikes and locally-tailored spinoffs will proliferate. And Manyavar will find its suit sales soaring beyond expected targets. Such worship is not new. After all the white wedding dress, now pervasive across the globe, emerged from a dress worn by Queen Victoria in 1840.

But why do some moments, and some images, go viral in a world that is saturated with such moments, including celebrity betrothals and betrayals. According to a study cited in the Harvard Business Review, (https://hbr.org/2015/09/why-some-videos-go-viral) videos go viral because of the psychological response they evoke (how they make you feel) and the social motivation (why you want to share it) of viewers who receive them.

It is perhaps unsurprising that a wedding of two personas from the two most glamorous fields in India, would invoke a psychological response.  After all, with growing urbanization, and the alienation we feel inside cities, we no longer have the village or small-town gossip to glue us together. With so much time spent indoors, or glued to screens inside cars and buses, celebrities populate our stories. We share their ups and downs, celebrate their joys (or scoff at it, or belittle it), rue their errors. Their first dates, and breakups, and reunions can fuel conversations with strangers, spark arguments inside families, foment jokes in the neighbourhood, inspire memes sent to friends. When everything else feels polarizing inside the nation (the debates on GST, demonetization, the Gujarat elections, the religious divides), such moments seem to forge a sense, however fragile or fleeting, of community.

Also, the foreign setting. Perhaps they chose Tuscany to escape the inevitable crowds (and paparazzi) that would have hounded them in India. But in doing so, they only made themselves more desirable. They confirmed our sense that these are people whom we can relate to (after all, their wedding, seemed like any other Indian wedding, mehendi, sangeet, the cushioning presence of family and friends) but also designer people (Tuscany, Sabyasachi, muted colours, an unbelievably small guest list) who are distanced enough to remain fascinating. The video and the curated images, like the best Bollywood movies, offered a momentary escape from the humdrum of our own lives.

But why did #Virushka go uber-viral, unlike other celebrity events? According to Derek Thompson, the author of Hitmakers: The Science of Popularity in An Age of Distraction (Penguin Press, 2017), some cultural products become ‘hits’ because they are propelled by two factors. The first is a characteristic of the content, the other has to do with distribution.

Based on Thompson’s analysis of hits across the ages, the content that audiences resonate deeply with tend to be “familiar surprises.” He notes that content consumers are torn by two contradictory impulses. On the one hand, they are neophilic - they prize novelty and the unexpected. On the other hand, they are neophobic - they dread something so jarringly different, they can’t relate to it in familiar ways.

Virushka was certainly familiar. The famed relationship between India’s cricket captain and the spunky Anushka has been all over glamor magazines, the mainstream and social media. She was spotted at his matches, he at her film shoots. Even a ‘pre-wedding’ or a dress-rehearsal of sorts was blared into our living rooms, courtesy Manyavar. Yet, the condensed two-minute plus video and images after the event were surprising enough to draw everyone’s attention. After all, there was still some speculation on whether they would really get hitched. And the exact locale and dates had been kept under wraps.

The other factor, according to Thompson, is the method of distribution. He shatters the notion that information travels like a virus, spreading from one person to the next.  He says that hits are created by a pattern that is more akin to defused bombs. News travels slowly until it is exploded by an ‘influencer’ who might have a million plus followers. In this case, Virat and Anushka already had significant fan bases, but moreover, their tweets and videos were recirculated by the nation’s largest influencers in the film, political and cricketing fraternities. The mini-explosions led to larger and larger explosions, until the tweets climbed to a global trend.

Few other moments would have so many influencers banding behind them, to reshare and burst across the nation’s screens like Diwali crackers. So most other marketers and political campaign managers, badgered by demanding clients, might prefer to claim that Rab Ne Bheja Viral.