Kylie Jenner has long been recognized as the Queen of Instagram. However, there’s now an unlikely contender who is giving Jenner a run for her money: the account @world_record_egg, whose verified account boasts 3.9 million followers and features only one post—a stock photo of an egg. Simple as it may seem, that photo of an egg recently beat the record Jenner held for most liked Instagram photo of all time, earning over 32.5 million likes and counting.
For comparison, AJC reported that Jenner’s most liked photo, the announcement of her daughter Stormi’s birth, gained only 18 million likes.
The account had the goal of toppling Jenner from the get-go. According to Vogue, on January 4, the account posted the photo of the egg 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.” Since then, news of the egg’s mission went viral, spawning an unavoidable campaign, not to mention some pretty hilarious memes.
One of the people who has been enjoying the egg memes is Kylie Jenner herself who responded by posting a video on her Instagram account that shows her cracking an egg on the ground under the heading “Kylie when she sees the world record egg account.”
Perhaps, at the end of the day, the Instagram egg is just that—an egg.
But maybe the story of the egg is actually much more profound, reflecting our values and the state of society as a whole. Popularity on Instagram can often feel like a reinforcement of the status quo. Having any combination conventional good looks, wealth, and a degree of fame attract likes by the boatload, and it’s no surprise that Kylie Jenner happens to have all three. What better thing to upend that hierarchy than something as pure and simple as an egg?
The egg is a reminder to chill out about our followers and likes. It makes Instagram just a little more meaningless, and, as a result, just a little more fun.