I don’t know for certain, but can’t really imagine that being the case. There are several reasons I can’t imagine something going viral off lemmy per now:

• 1. The combined user mass of lemmy is probably smaller than the critical mass needed to really go viral

• 1a. This could be “worked around” if someone reposted from lemmy to some other, larger network. Still, I wouldn’t say that meant something “went viral off lemmy”, since that would imply it went viral before being reposted.

• 2. Lemmy doesn’t (by default) push heavily to get trending stuff into everyones feed.

• 2a. I say “by default” because I’m assuming someone could set up an instance designed around maximising the views of trending material.

• 3. Slightly related to 1, but afaik, there are few, if any, very big social media personalities on here. For something to go viral, you’re basically reliant on either an algorithm catching on to your stuff and shoving it in everyone’s face or some person with a huge following shoving it in everyone’s face.
• 4. The very system of lemmy (following communities rather than users) makes it extremely difficult for any individual user to gather a large enough following to make things go viral by posting/sharing them

Basically: Too small user mass, no big personalities, and a “following system”/visibility algorithm built around promoting interesting and healthy media consumption rather than cultish behaviour prevents things from going viral off lemmy.—