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When she spoke about her COVID diagnosis, she did so with a sense of irony rather than seeking attention. She highlighted a recurring social reflex—the tendency to reduce her to a recurring joke. The word “viral” carries a double meaning in her case: biologically, it refers to illness; culturally, it reflects the state she has lived in since 1998. For many online, she is still treated less as a real person and more as a familiar reference point, as if she exists to replay the same narrative for public amusement.
