World Record Egg

2019viral imageclassic

World Record Egg is a January 2019 Instagram post of a plain brown egg that beat Kylie Jenner to become the most-liked photo on the platform. The account was later revealed as a marketing project by London ad creative Chris Godfrey, and the campaign ended in a Super Bowl mental health ad on Hulu.

record breaking memesinstagram memesadvertising memeshidden identity memes2019 memes

Overview

World Record Egg is a stock photograph of a plain brown egg that, in January 2019, became the most-liked post on Instagram, ending a record held by Kylie Jenner1. The image was posted from the account @world_record_egg with a single explicit goal written into the caption: beat Jenner's 18 million likes on the post announcing her daughter Stormi Webster3.

Fans of the account started calling themselves the "Egg Gang" and referred to the egg as "Eugene"4. Part of the appeal was how deliberately unremarkable the picture was. There was no filter, no captioning gimmick, no celebrity face, just an egg on a white background against a globally recognized reference point. As the account's creator later put it, "An egg is an egg. An egg has no gender, race, or religion. It's universal"5.

By early February 2019 the post sat above 50 million likes and had turned into an active marketing property, with agencies openly pitching brand tie-ins around a planned "crack" reveal2. It held the Instagram record until December 20th, 2022, when a photo Lionel Messi posted after winning the 2022 World Cup took the title4.

How It Spread

The post picked up momentum through the first week of January, then went vertical over the weekend of January 12th and 13th. BuzzFeed News reported that by Sunday morning the egg had around 9 million likes, doubled that within 10 hours, and passed Jenner's record while gaining roughly a million likes per hour3. The BuzzFeed piece also included an email interview in which the account, writing in character as a chicken named "Henrietta," claimed "Eugene is my egg" and said the record push started because "I saw this as a challenge to beat it. It was nothing personal"3.

Kylie Jenner joined the joke on January 13th by tweeting a video of herself cracking an egg on hot pavement4. That same weekend the story crossed into mainstream press, with The New York Times publishing "An Egg, Just a Regular Egg, Is Instagram's Most-Liked Post Ever" and a screenshot comparison of the two posts pulling more than 90,000 upvotes on r/madlads4. Copycat accounts appeared almost immediately, including @theworldrecordnut with a pistachio and @world_record.hen with a chicken, none of which took off4. On January 16th, MrBeast piggybacked on the format with a YouTube upload titled "Make This Video The Most Liked Video On YouTube," which passed 11 million views in five days4.

The payoff came on February 3rd, 2019, during Super Bowl LIII. A Hulu commercial showed an animated version of the egg cracking under "the pressure of social media" and pointed viewers to TalkingEgg.info, a landing page for Mental Health America1. Mental Health America told CNBC the egg team asked permission to list the org but MHA had no role in producing the ad1. The record itself finally fell on December 20th, 2022, to Lionel Messi's World Cup post4.

World Record Egg

2019viral imageclassic

World Record Egg is a January 2019 Instagram post of a plain brown egg that beat Kylie Jenner to become the most-liked photo on the platform. The account was later revealed as a marketing project by London ad creative Chris Godfrey, and the campaign ended in a Super Bowl mental health ad on Hulu.

record breaking memes instagram memes advertising memes hidden identity memes 2019 memes

Overview

World Record Egg is a stock photograph of a plain brown egg that, in January 2019, became the most-liked post on Instagram, ending a record held by Kylie Jenner1. The image was posted from the account @world_record_egg with a single explicit goal written into the caption: beat Jenner's 18 million likes on the post announcing her daughter Stormi Webster3.

Fans of the account started calling themselves the "Egg Gang" and referred to the egg as "Eugene"4. Part of the appeal was how deliberately unremarkable the picture was. There was no filter, no captioning gimmick, no celebrity face, just an egg on a white background against a globally recognized reference point. As the account's creator later put it, "An egg is an egg. An egg has no gender, race, or religion. It's universal"5.

By early February 2019 the post sat above 50 million likes and had turned into an active marketing property, with agencies openly pitching brand tie-ins around a planned "crack" reveal2. It held the Instagram record until December 20th, 2022, when a photo Lionel Messi posted after winning the 2022 World Cup took the title4.

How It Spread

The post picked up momentum through the first week of January, then went vertical over the weekend of January 12th and 13th. BuzzFeed News reported that by Sunday morning the egg had around 9 million likes, doubled that within 10 hours, and passed Jenner's record while gaining roughly a million likes per hour3. The BuzzFeed piece also included an email interview in which the account, writing in character as a chicken named "Henrietta," claimed "Eugene is my egg" and said the record push started because "I saw this as a challenge to beat it. It was nothing personal"3.

Kylie Jenner joined the joke on January 13th by tweeting a video of herself cracking an egg on hot pavement4. That same weekend the story crossed into mainstream press, with The New York Times publishing "An Egg, Just a Regular Egg, Is Instagram's Most-Liked Post Ever" and a screenshot comparison of the two posts pulling more than 90,000 upvotes on r/madlads4. Copycat accounts appeared almost immediately, including @theworldrecordnut with a pistachio and @world_record.hen with a chicken, none of which took off4. On January 16th, MrBeast piggybacked on the format with a YouTube upload titled "Make This Video The Most Liked Video On YouTube," which passed 11 million views in five days4.

The payoff came on February 3rd, 2019, during Super Bowl LIII. A Hulu commercial showed an animated version of the egg cracking under "the pressure of social media" and pointed viewers to TalkingEgg.info, a landing page for Mental Health America1. Mental Health America told CNBC the egg team asked permission to list the org but MHA had no role in producing the ad1. The record itself finally fell on December 20th, 2022, to Lionel Messi's World Cup post4.