Dubai: A brown egg has broken the world record and become the most liked photo of all time on Instagram, with over 23 million likes, today.
The record was previously held by a photo of reality TV personality Kylie Jenner’s new-born baby, Stormi, uploaded in February last year. And this egg post 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. It is captioned: “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, #LikeTheEgg #EggSoldiers #EggGang.”
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.
An uncracked mystery
News and entertainment website Buzzfeed, reached out to the account admin of world_record_egg, to understand the motivation behind the photo.
The actual identity of the account admin remained hidden, while they responded with the identity of ‘Henrietta the Chicken’ from the British countryside.
They replied to Buzzfeed: “Read an article regarding the top 20 posts on Instagram and Kylie Jenner topped it with 18million. ...I saw it as a challenge to beat it... It was nothing personal.”
The ‘Egg Gang’ (as the admin has also referred to themselves) behind the account, named the egg ‘Eugene’, and identified it as Henrietta’s egg.
Reactions online
Kylie Jenner responded with humour to losing 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 post 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 feelings of pride about the accomplishment.
Instagram user users @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, or lack thereof, posting: “... 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.”
