Virality has become somewhat of a buzzword in the last decade. It’s that elusive thing which marketers are always chasing, but which seems fickle and complex beyond our full understanding. After all, if anyone could create an idea virus, we’d be bombarded with worldwide memes relentlessly.

Despite its complexity, Malcolm Gladwell reveals some interesting macro-properties of virality in his book “The Tipping Point”. He’s able to identify the three components which determine something’s virality, and gives examples of how small changes in any of the three components can cause a tip towards uncontrollable exponential spread. These key components of virality are the the thing being spread, the people spreading it, and the environment it is being spread in.

Virtual Reality (VR) is set to launch to consumers in 2016. Studying the virality components in this context, I was struck with how massive changes were in all three categories. If a few minor changes in the town of Baltimore can cause a syphilis epidemic, the changes setting the stage for VR are enough to make you stop in your tracks and gape. Without a doubt, VR will be the most viral thing of 2016, and here’s why:

The Thing Being Spread

If you talk to someone who hasn’t tried the new breed of VR headsets, they’ll often bring up how VR tried to be a thing in the 90s and absolutely failed. Do you know what else tried to be a thing in the 90s and failed? The smartphone. We’ve come a long way since then technologically. Developments driven by the recent smartphone market finally place us at a point where we can have hi-fidelity, lag-free VR headsets for $400–600. We’re talking about devices the price of a smartphone or console that when worn make you feel like you are in a completely different reality. The experience of VR literally can’t be experienced any other way, and is something you have to try first-hand to truly understand. As an added plus, VR can emulate all other mediums, which will eventually render every other digital screen obsolete.

Add to this the parallel development of motion tracking. With controllers hitting market in 2016 (designed specifically for VR), you are able to perfectly match (better than 1mm precision) where your hand is in physical space to digital space. This means that if you want to reach out and touch objects in the digital world, you do exactly that. It’s a level of natural control perfectly suited for the VR medium, and that compounds the sense of being somewhere you are not. Playing with our hands, after all, is one of our primary urges.

The People Spreading It

The VR corporate team is a massive powerhouse. Facebook purchased Oculus (the first “new” VR headset) for $2 billion, and is throwing considerable weight behind it. Sony has a competing headset which will work on the PS4 (their VR booth at E3 this year was massive). Valve and HTC (with a combined value over $50 billion) have teamed up for a VR headset called the Vive. Samsung teamed up with Oculus’s software team to release the GearVR, which makes use of their suite of mobile phones. Even Google released Google Cardboard, a simple VR headset that you connect your smartphone to (personally I consider it a crap experience, but they’ve already shipped over a million worldwide). All this isn’t even to mention Magic Leap (closing an 837 million investment round) and Microsoft Hololens, two Augmented Reality plays that will be hitting in the next couple of years.

In addition to the massive amount of talent, capital, and marketing force represented by these companies, over $600 million has been invested in VR startups since the start of 2015 ($2 billion since the start of 2010 excluding the Facebook/Oculus deal). This investment capital is for an industry that has no commercial market yet. This has literally never happened. When the iPhone launched the smartphone market, it didn’t even have an app store at first. In 1995 there was a total of $750 million invested in ALL software startups, most of which had nothing to do with the internet. Investors who have keyed in to VR are so confident of its success they’re willing to put millions into an industry with no consumer headsets sold yet. All these well funded startups (and many not so well funded ones) are working hard to make sure people have obvious reasons to want VR. A hardware platform launch has never had so much software development ready to go out the gate.

Which brings us to the developers and enthusiasts who currently have VR hardware. There’s less than 1.5 million VR devices out in the wild (if you include Google Cardboard), yet over 23 million Americans have tried VR (which doesn’t even include international VR usage). That’s a virality coefficient well over 15x (and possibly as high as 30x)! That means for every person who owns a VR headset, they on average show it to 15 people. Do you have any idea how fucking ludicrous that number is? That’s the equivalent of when a new smartphone comes out, I let 15 of my friends play with it. Sure, the people who currently have headsets are enthusiasts and developers who have a vested interest in showing VR to people. However, Malcolm Gladwell also talks in his book about how the majority of viral spread can be attributed to a small percentage of very active people. From an anecdotal standpoint, I’ve found that VR is one of those things that you can’t help but show anyone who has never tried it. Seeing their reactions never gets old; it’s definitely a mutually joyful experience. With a consumer launch, the number of active enthusiasts will only grow, as will their reach (which we’ll discuss in the next section). If you haven’t tried VR by the end of 2016, it will be out of willful denial (or extreme poverty).

The Environment It’s Being Spread In

So we’ve talked about how the technology itself has tipped to being good and cheap enough for consumers used to hi-def displays. We’ve also talked about how the technology’s peddlers are some of the most powerful, well funded, and enthusiastic in the world. These components alone would make VR successful. However, a more subtle and much less talked about change has been building which will ensure that VR’s virality is total.

I’m talking about the increase in social connectivity we’ve undergone since smartphones were released. Back in 2007, Facebook and Twitter had been publicly available for only a year, Youtube was an amatuer video platform, Reddit was an obscure site overpowered by Digg, Instagram and Snapchat didn’t exist, and practically no one had a smartphone. The rate at which smartphones were adopted, however, was fast enough while all this social infrastructure was evolving to reach complete US saturation within 8 years. Back then, most peoples’ only option to see or hear about smartphones was to watch the news, physically see your friend’s hardware, or be one of the minority who used social media.

Now that social infrastructure has matured. At all times now, we have a computer with a camera in our pocket, capable of connecting to scores of friends, strangers, and information via the internet. When VR releases, it will be at a moment in human history when far more information is moving between people than ever before. If a video like Gagnam Style can move across the world garnering over a billion views, what’s going to happen when scores of people start posting, tweeting, and sharing videos, pictures, and text that show them wearing a futuristic-looking headset and talking like madmen trying to describe their experience? It will be everywhere. When the uniqueness of the experience combines with the high-frequency sharing of it’s evangelizers, the social media ripples will be impossible to miss. If any of your friends has a VR headset, you’re going to be curious enough to beg them for a turn. It’ll be the hottest Christmas item of 2016 easily. No one likes to be left out on a movement, and the social pressure to know what all the hubub is about will be so strong as to leave practically no one in the developed world a VR virgin by the end of 2016 (barring insufficient manufacturing facilities).

Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, you now have irrefutable evidence of how explosive VR is going to be in 2016. If you were before unconvinced, welcome to the future, it’s going to be a wild ride. If you were already part of the VR brotherhood, I’ve hopefully supplied you with enough firepower to turn even the thickest of naysayers. If somehow you still don’t see the truth… well, there are still climate change deniers. At least I’ll be able to sit here smugly and say “I told you so” while either broke from a failed startup (but ahead on the skills for a VR job), or well on my way to raising the level of human consciousness through thoughtful media.