By Aruzhan Bimurzina, Year 10
An egg broke the world record of the most liked instagram post!
A picture of a simple egg was anonymously posted on the 4th of January 2019 on the social media app Instagram, by an account called @world_record_egg. The unidentified user posted the picture as an aim to get the most liked picture of Instagram. The previous record holder of the most liked post was none other than Kylie Jenner, well known as a reality T.V. personality and the founder of Kylie Cosmetics. Kylie gave birth to her first daughter, Stormi, on the 1st of February 2018, later posting a picture of her baby daughter holding her thumb on her Instagram page five days later. The picture got a whopping 18,663,418 likes from her 124 million followers and is still growing. Kylie’s post held the title of most liked picture of Instagram for just under a year, until the egg rapidly took the title in a matter of days, achieving over 49 million likes within the first two weeks of its posting. The egg’s likes are still growing at a rapid speed.
The brains behind the internet phenomenon is a 19 year old Ishan Goel (@ishansgoel on Instagram). He posted the famous egg post with the caption “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.”
Ishan reached out to all of the celebrities and influentials from his page on Reddit to inform them about his post. Celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Younes Bendjima, Hailey Baldwin and Kylie Jenner herself liked the picture. Instagram users started re-posting the picture on their stories instructing others to go like it, quickly turning the egg into a worldwide phenomenon. Ishan Goel says he wanted Instagrammers to “connect” with an inanimate object and did it for his own fun and interest.
The same instagram page posted another picture of an egg on the 18th of January which now has a small crack on the side. The picture has already gained over 6 million likes and continues to climb at a high speed. The egg is definitely on a roll!
The rapid speed at which the egg gained popularity in the circle of both teenagers and adults demonstrated the impact social media has on our everyday lives. The irony of an egg gaining global attention due to our access of smartphones, which is now a factor of the lives of the new generation, can reflect how the era of technology manages to influence anyone with access to the internet.
