Is Social Media like an Onion?: Exploring the Social Penetration Theory as an Explanation for Viral Responses to Intimate Self-Disclosures

Abstract

A recent public FB post about a personal experience with depression went viral within a week. Within a week this post was reposted on numerous media outlets, and shared by others nearly 500,000 times. This post skipped to the third, affective stage, of the Social Penetration Theory