So what came first: the egg, or being famous?
OUR family movie night was interrupted on Sunday by outbursts from the 12-year-old.
“Mom! It’s up to 21 million likes,” he said.
“Now 1 000 more,” he cut in again. Dad paused the movie, exasperated.
“Every time I refresh it, there are more likes! This is crazy!” the tween said. He was giddy. “The egg, you guys. The egg is famous.”
We rolled our eyes, shushed him and hit play.
By Monday, everyone was talking about the Egg, the Instagram world-record holder for the most likes for a post. The Egg became the most-liked post since Kylie Jenner got 18.1 million likes last February for her baby announcement. That record was broken on Sunday. By Monday morning, it was at 33 million likes, and growing. (The #Egggang has already announced that egg merch is coming soon.)
There is a message in the Egg. And it’s bigger than the fact that the tween is cooler than all of us.
The Egg, if you haven’t already heard, is nothing more than a photo of a lovely brown and slightly speckled specimen of poultry perfection that was uploaded by an account holder identified as the “#Egggang”. Plain as it is, the Egg offers an excellent lesson about the pursuit and celebration of internet fame.
It used to be that when you asked kids what they want to be when they grow up, you’d hear “astronaut” or “ballerina” or “doctor”. You might even hear “rich”.
Now, too often, we get a different answer: “Famous”. That’s what professors Yalda T Uhls and Patricia Greenfield at the University of Los Angeles heard most often in the studies they did starting in 2007.
Scary, right?
A recent Pew Research study found that 37% of teens said one of the big negatives of their social media lives is feeling the pressure to get likes on the things they post.
There it is: popularity, by the numbers.
I see it in my 12-year-old’s little squad. They have a small circle on social media. One of them has his own Youtube channel, they all have Instagram accounts and they interact ferociously.
My child sparkles when he gets a lot of likes for a picture that he posts, from goofy snaps of the dog to food. His current record is a video of him riding an office chair down the ramp of a parking garage.
And you can see how easily they can go from dog pictures to driving while blindfolded a la the Bird Box challenge.
My tween and his friends were all aboard the Egg frenzy. And I asked him why they all liked the Egg.
“I don’t think it was about the Egg at all,” he said. “It was just funny to like something like an egg.”
“What is there to like about an egg?” I asked him.
“It has lots of nutrition. It’s amazing that it just comes out of a chicken’s butt and you can eat it. It has protein, it can be made into a cake, or bread, or you can have it sunny-side up, or scrambled.
“But nobody thought about that,” he said. “People just liked it to like it. Everyone else was doing it.”
Bingo.
So what does all the internet attention mean? Are likes about the substance of a post, or just a measure of groupthink?
I asked Henrietta, the alleged layer of the egg, according to the #Egggang account holder who posted the photo.
“Is this a campaign to protest the banality of internet fame, a celebration of the beauty of your menstrual cycle, or proof that your potential offspring is cuter than Kylie’s?” I asked Henrietta.
“All of the above,” she replied. | The Washington Post