A pretend Fb occasion disguised as a math drawback has been one in every of its prime posts for six months

A virtually year-old Fb occasion for a “easy maths competitors” has been one of the viral posts on the platform for six months. The “occasion” racked up about 51 million views on Fb in the course of the first quarter of 2025, in response to the corporate’s latest report on “extensively seen content material” on the platform.

That will be a powerful stat for any single submit, nevertheless it’s the second quarter in a row through which the “maths competitors” has nabbed the quantity two spot on Meta’s record of extensively seen content material. It additionally appeared on final quarter’s report, throughout which period it acquired about 64.3 million views, in response to 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 previous 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 seem like a standard picture submit. The picture additionally has some putting similarities to different seemingly basic math equations which were going viral on Fb for nearly 15 years.

A have a look at the occasion web page itself reveals that a whole lot of 1000’s of individuals have engaged with the occasion. Greater than 800,000 individuals responded to the supposed July 8, 2024 occasion. Even now, almost a 12 months 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 fundamental 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 another current posts from Ibeh, who has about 25,000 Fb followers.

In any case, the submit provides an attention-grabbing window into the sorts of weird content material and questionable techniques that also often goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta not too long ago mentioned it will crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if the sort of engagement bait would fall underneath the class of content material it is explicitly making an attempt to discourage.