Narratives Have Been “Going Viral” for Millennia
People have been spinning narratives since time immemorial. Contagion was
increased by communications at bazaars, religious festivals and fairs, as well as
casual encounters. In ancient Rome, for example, people who wanted the news
would attend the regular salutatio at their patron’s home, or they went to the
Forum where they listened to orators or a praeco, who wore a special toga to
stand out. The praeco announced news and stories to the crowd, read
advertisements, and handled auctions. Rumor is the ancient Latin word for
contagious narrative.
The polymath David Hume (1711–76) wrote in 1742:
When any causes beget a particular inclination or passion, at a certain time
and among a certain people, though many individuals may escape the
contagion, and be ruled by passions peculiar to themselves; yet the multitude
will certainly be seized by the common affection, and be governed by it in all
their actions.9
Hume wrote before the germ theory of disease was established, before
bacteria and viruses were identified, but many of his contemporaries understood
that both disease and ideas were spread by interpersonal contact.
In 1765, during the economic depression in the American colonies of the
United Kingdom following the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War),10 a
letter to the printer in the New-London Gazette (Connecticut) by Alexander
Windmill (apparently a pseudonym) identified an epidemic of a narrative that
involved the sentence “THERE IS NO MONEY”:
I take it for granted, there is not one of your readers but has heard that most
melancholy sentence, repeated times without number, THERE IS NO MONEY: nor
scarce one who has not himself frequently joined in this epidemic complaint.
Conversation among people of every rank, I have remarked for some months
past to run in one invariable channel: and the hackneyed topicks of discourse
to be constantly introduced in the same precise order, with admirable
uniformity. 
Benevolent 
enquiries 
respecting 
health, 
and 
ingenious
observations on the weather, according to the laudable custom of our
ancestors, from time immemorial lead the van. As soon as these curious and

important articles are discussed; the muscles of the face being previously
worked up into a mixt passion of distress and resentment, tempered with a
suitable proportion of political sagacity; succeeds the wonderful discovery
aforesaid, THERE IS NO MONEY; which is instantly repeated by each party, with
every token of astonishment. One would think, by the surprise visible in their
countenances, and the vehemence of their expressions, that neither of them
had heard of the calamity til that minute, tho’, perhaps, it is not two hours
since the same persons conversed upon the same subject and, made the same
remark.11
Windmill goes on to calculate (with some exaggeration perhaps) that the
sentence THERE IS NO MONEY was then currently being repeated fifty million times
a day by English-speaking inhabitants of the American colonies. He thought it
reasonable to assume based on his observations that a million people were
saying it every twenty minutes during most of the daylight hours, and some were
even sleep-talking it.
Charles Mackay drew attention to the contagious spread of “extraordinary
popular delusions” in his 1841 book, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular
Delusions. Gustave Le Bon said in his book Psychologie des foules (The Crowd,
1895), “Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious
power as intense as that of microbes.”12 Related terms are collective
consciousness (Durkheim, 1897), collective memory (Halbwachs, 1925), and
memes (Dawkins, 1976).