The sunny side of social media
At 23 million likes, a brown egg has become the world’s most liked Instagram image
for most Instagram likes, of Kylie Jenner’s newborn A brown egg has broken the world record and become the most liked photo on Instagram, with more than 23 million likes.
The record was previously held by a photo of reality TV personality Kylie Jenner’s newborn Stormi, uploaded in February last year.
The egg picture was set up primarily to break that figure.
A single photo of an egg, the only post by a mysterious, unverified account called world_record_egg on January 4, took just 10 days to surpass the previous record of 18.2 million likes held by Jenner’s photo.
“Let us 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 account posted.
The egg surpassed the needed number by 5 million likes.
The account accomplished the feat by increasing coverage, tagging celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon. They also tagged entertainment websites such as LADBible and Buzzfeed.
News and entertainment website Buzzfeed reached out to the account owner of world_record_egg to understand the motivation behind the photo.
The owner replied saying the account was run by Henrietta the Chicken from the British countryside.
“Read an article regarding the top 20 posts on Instagram and Kylie Jenner topped it with 18 million . ... I saw it as a challenge to beat it... It was nothing personal,” was the reply.
The Egg Gang (as the user has also referred to themselves) behind the account, named the egg Eugene, and identified it as Henrietta’s egg.
Jenner responded with humour to losing the top spot. She uploaded an old video of her smashing an egg on a pavement to her Instagram account, with the caption: “Take that little egg.”
Meanwhile, @world_record_egg reacted to the achievement by posting an Instagram story with an image that read: “This is a madness. What a time to be alive. It does not end here though, we are only just getting started.”
Some social media users expressed pride about the accomplishment.
Instagram user @ryanscheetz13 who liked the photo, commented: “So cool to be a part of history.”
Other social media users such as Rebecca Cheslar on Facebook were concerned by people’s priorities, saying: “All the good that could be accomplished by getting 18 million people worldwide to participate together, and this is what we do... like an egg.”