What I’ve found is that the nature of viral movements (bestselling books, pseudoscience claims, self help, programming movements, architectures, social media phenomena etc) is that the truth or proof for the underlying claim of the viral movement is not important only its widespread virality and ability to spread

Ie the idea has to be convincing enough to spread from person to person as a meme but also have enough armchair level depth to pass the bullshit filters of most reasonable people- ie popularity wins over truth

Most people do not have the intellectual curiosity or time to deeply verify these claims - but inevitably these fads die as they appear..

Clearly this is one example