It’s basically a branching process, like a tree where each person who sees the meme can “branch” to a few others. Think of it as a simple reproduction number, R. If each viewer forwards it to, say, three people on average, R equals 3. The number of people who see it after n steps is Rⁿ, so it grows exponentially fast. In real life the numbers drop because not everyone forwards, and the network has overlapping contacts, but the core math is still that branching factor times the number of rounds. That’s why a meme can hit millions in a day if the initial R is even modestly above one.

You’re right, it looks effortless, but even the simplest “drop a GIF” has a hidden structure. Each viewer acts like a small transmitter: they decide whether to forward, how many people they tell, and how quickly. The math just describes that hidden cascade. So while it seems like pure chaos, it’s really just a predictable pattern in disguise.