Who remembers when this was the most watched video on YouTube?
“The clip received 70 million views in under 8 months. At that time, it was rated on YouTube as: #1 Most Viewed All Time Video on YouTube.com.” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judson_Laipply
“He uploaded the dance to YouTube on April 6th, 2006.” - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/evolution-of-dance
Videos like this still go “viral” but with hyper personalized algorithms today there are much more niche communities that things circulate in.
That’s the thing, it’s not viral if it’s personalized. “Viral” expands far outside of the niche. You might not like videos of baby or slice of life videos, but Charlie bit my finger was everywhere. Almost no one wanted Rick Astley, but everyone saw it. Even this, I don’t look up dance videos, but I Watched this whole thing. That’s where “Viral” is… The “this is popular even without being a fan of it.”
Now it seems the only videos that do that is shitty drama or clickbait crap.