Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Every once in a while security researchers would discover sophisticated exploits that would allow malwares to take over your computer via multimedia files, but those are actually rarely exploited in the wild by run off the mill malwares.

Unless you're an important person being targeted by hackers and three letter agencies, your biggest source of threat is running infected programs from untrusted sources, e.g. cracks downloaded from random torrents or warez sites, shady sites serving ads that trick you to run some executables, etc.

someone please correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that for it to be possible, the application that plays the mkv file would have to have a remote execution exploit and the code for the virus would be executed through the player. the player would be required to have elevated privileges. I think this is exceptionally unlikely for vlc

Definitely no, viruses need 48-72 hours of incubation before the .mkv host becomes contagious. If the file is <24 hours old, I'd look for another source.

If you're worried your computer might be infected, you should consider swapping your case LEDs with UV lights to purify your system.

You’re probably fine it’s extremely unlikely. Dont trust emails that say they recorded you wanking its a scam