Doug Hofstadter back in 1983 devoted his Metmagical Themas column in Scientific American to the subject of viral sentences and self-replicating structures. The title of this post is an example he used to illustrate a viral sentence.
A generalized viral sentence, according to Mr Hofstadter, would have the form The *villain* is *wronging* the *victim*.
For a self-replicating structure, he offered the following generalized pattern:
System S:
Begin:
S1: blah
S2: Blah blah
...
S100: It is you duty to convince others that System S is true.
End:
The special case of the generalized viral sentence: The whales are in danger of extiction, could be a shorthand version of system S where if you believe the premise, then S100 is implied, and there's probably a villain lurking somwhere.
Another generalized system, he notes, is as follows:
System X:
Begin:
X1: Anyone who does not believe System X will burn in hell
X2: It is your duty to save others from suffering in hell
End
