# Mind Virus **Entity class:** Metaphor **Domain:** Memetics / rhetoric / cognitive security **Maturity:** Developed with explicit limits ## Definition **Mind virus** is a metaphor for an idea or narrative that reproduces by exploiting attention, emotion, identity, or social transmission. It is not a clinical diagnosis and does not make a person carrying an idea biologically infected. The phrase can illuminate self-propagating features—simplicity, repetition, identity signaling, fear, moral outrage, or incentives to recruit—while also encouraging overreach. Used carelessly, it can dehumanize believers, turn disagreement into pathology, and conceal the political or material reasons an idea succeeds. Research-grade use should identify the actual mechanism: imitation, persuasion, coercion, recommender amplification, peer reinforcement, or organizational recruitment. ## Relationships - **metaphor within:** [[wiki/Memetic Theory|Memetic Theory]]. - **applied to:** [[wiki/Memetic Contagion and Violent Extremism|Memetic Contagion and Violent Extremism]]. - **defensive response:** [[wiki/Cognitive Security|Cognitive Security]] and [[wiki/Inoculation Theory|Inoculation Theory]]. - **boundary:** not equivalent to [[wiki/Radicalization|Radicalization]] or mental illness. ## Sources / Provenance - Aaron Lynch, *Thought Contagion* (1996). - Richard Brodie, *Virus of the Mind* (1996).