A Stock Photo of a Single Egg Becomes Most-Liked Instagram Post, Unseating Kylie Jenner
Some genius set out to break Kylie’s "most liked"-post record and did it ... with a regular ol' pic of an egg.
Don’t look now — or OK, go ahead and look — but Kylie Jenner’s birth announcement has been unseated as the most liked post on Instagram. The post that did her in was not from another celebrity or any other source you might expect. It was an egg. Just a normal, everyday, brown egg – albeit an attractively, if straightforwardly, photographed one (a stock photo, The Guardian reports) – that did her in.
What gives?
Someone – it is not yet clear who -- posted the photo of the egg to Instagram on January 4 with the express stated intent of gaining more likes than Jenner’s post.
“Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this,” the mystery poster who created the Egg Gang (@world_record_egg) Instagram accountwrote, following that message with a “Person Raising Both Hands in Celebration” emoji and three simple hashtags:#LikeTheEgg #EggSoldiers #EggGang.
Then, while some of us were simply going about our lives, the post gained momentum, gathering up likes like, well … like nothing before, really.
Sometime on the night of Sunday, January 13 – just nine days after the original post – it blew past Jenner’s record and just kept going.
“This is madness, What a time to be alive,” the Egg Gang noted on Instagram.
Indeed.
As of this writing, on Monday morning, the egg had garnered more than 29 million likes, with thousands more rolling in every minute and no sign of stopping.
“The egg’s fans have passed the population of Australia,” noted the New York Times.
Whoa.
If you want to go ahead and join the movement and like it yourself, here it is:
Jenner, who has been taunted by the egg-crazed masses in the comments section of the formerly record-holding post of her child, responded to the jeers by posting a video of herself cracking a lookalike brown egg on a “really hot” sidewalk.
“Take that little egg,” she wrote alongside the video, which, while posted less than 24 hours ago, has been viewed more than 18 million times and itself appears poised to bypass her old record, if not the egg’s new one.
Details about the genius behind the egg are beginning to emerge. The Washington Post reports that it was “someone living in London” who came up with idea after reading about the top 20 Instagram accounts from last year.
“I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and beat the record with something as basic as possible. Which led to me deciding on the egg,” the person told the Post. “I guess it’s also a comment on celebrity culture and how fragile and easily cracked it is (pun intended)”
I guess it is.
Related Links
