An almost year-old Fb occasion for a “easy maths competitors” has been one of the crucial viral posts on the platform for six months. The “occasion” racked up about 51 million views on Fb throughout the first quarter of 2025, in keeping with the corporate’s newest report on “broadly considered content material” on the platform.
That may be a formidable stat for any single submit, but it surely’s the second quarter in a row by which the “maths competitors” has nabbed the quantity two spot on Meta’s record of broadly considered content material. It additionally appeared on final quarter’s report, throughout which period it acquired about 64.3 million views, in keeping with an archived model of the report.
So why is a random Fb occasion that is probably not an occasion getting greater than 100 million views? It will appear to be a repackaging of an outdated engagement bait tactic. The header picture for the occasion is a picture of a chunk of paper with the phrases “just for genius” adopted by a seemingly easy equation. When shared as a Fb submit, the picture is prominently displayed in a method that will appear like a standard picture submit. The picture additionally has some hanging similarities to different seemingly basic math equations which have been going viral on Fb for almost 15 years.
A take a look at the occasion web page itself exhibits that tons of of hundreds of individuals have engaged with the occasion. Greater than 800,000 individuals responded to the supposed July 8, 2024 occasion. Even now, almost a yr later, the occasion is seeing common feedback from Fb customers — most of whom are intent on earnestly explaining how the equation ought to be solved (or arguing with others’ interpretation). As Slate famous again in 2013, there’s one thing irresistible about arguing primary arithmetic with strangers on the web.
What’s a little bit of a thriller is why this submit has gone so viral months after it was initially posted. I reached out to the account behind the submit, a Nigerian-based creator named Ebuka Peter Ibeh and did not instantly hear again. The submit appears to be way more profitable than some other latest posts from Ibeh, who has about 25,000 Fb followers.
In any case, the submit provides an fascinating window into the sorts of weird content material and questionable ways that also commonly goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta lately stated it could crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if any such engagement bait would fall below the class of content material it is explicitly attempting to discourage.
