Considering the word is normally associated with disease, it's interesting how 'viral' has become a positive term in the internet age. Today, a viral video can turn a nobody - or, when used for marketing purposes, a company - into a phenomenon.
Of late, however, the word has been returning to its venomous roots in Hong Kong. Recently, two videos made their way onto the web: the first, of a mainland woman crossing the border to Hong Kong in the last stages of pregnancy in order to secure permanent residency for her newborn; the other shows a Hong Kong man loudly scolding a mainland woman for allowing her daughter to eat on the MTR.
These two videos, plus the recent controversy over Dolce & Gabbana's Tsim Sha Tsui store discriminating against Hong Kong shoppers in favour of mainland ones, have shone an unwanted light on some Hongkongers' resentment towards our neighbours.
Just when we thought things couldn't get much uglier, the virus struck again. On January 21 - fewer than 10 days after at least 1,000 people protested outside D&G - a video of Kong Qingdong, a professor of Chinese studies at Peking University, describing Hongkongers as 'running dogs' - hit the web.
It seemed every Hongkonger with a Facebook page had seen the video and added their comments to the debate. Viral, indeed.
Two days ago, local forum HKgolden.com revealed that it had raised more than HK$100,000 to place a full-page advertisement in Apple Daily depicting mainland parents as locusts, and declaring that Hongkongers had had enough.
Many media outlets describe the tension between both sides as 'growing', when in reality, it has always been there - just that the internet's viral nature has transformed previously unspoken sentiments into the giant elephant in the room.