What does it say about the power of social media?
Last week, an egg projected upon a blank white background got the most likes on any Instagram post ever. That’s it, a regular, everyday egg. And it got 50,294,133 likes as of Jan. 21st.
CBS asked in a recent piece “What’s so special about this egg?” to which they continued: “Nothing, really. It’s all about the purpose of the post. The egg photo was posted with one goal in mind: to beat out Jenner as the most-liked Instagram post ever.”
However, I still have a ton of follow-up questions about how this happened. Who owns the account? Why did the owner want to beat Kylie Jenner at having the most likes on Instagram? Why did the owner chose a photo of an egg to beat the record? And most importantly, how is the egg handling the fame?
In all seriousness, this egg creates a level of uncertainty for me. This anonymous, unsuspecting, brown-speckled egg really challenges my overall perception of social media, and how people around the world utilize such platforms.
This egg can get so much attention just for being a light-hearted meme, and yet so many other glaring social issues tend to be covered far less, if given any attention at all. What does this say about what the public finds important? What does this say about our larger society?
We know that social media can be incredibly serviceable. It has the power to draw attention to immensely important issues around the globe while also providing people a voice that they may have never had without a platform like Instagram or Twitter.
Without social media, specific movements would have had far more trouble consolidating. #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter are two recent key movements that really thrived and continue to thrive from social media.
This is the same for politics. The uprising in Egypt in 2011 against the Mubarak regime could have never taken root the way it did without Facebook. The Kavanaugh appointment last fall got an exceedingly large amount of media coverage. It was all we heard about for weeks.
With this, I think it’s fair to say that I do have confidence in the power of social media and its users alike. It gives people a place to come together and do some pretty great things across the board.
Therefore, in this context, the egg photo really challenges my previous conceptions of social media. And it is the principle of the thing that got me thinking.
I think this meme reinforces how obscure our humor has become (not that I’m complaining). But more importantly, it underscores the idea that people flock to what they want to see. People don’t go on social media for politics; they go on to get a laugh.
From what I gather, seeing that a specific social media platform has the power to bring about such a huge nonpartisan following to something as menial as an egg, we as a society should in turn utilize that tool to broaden our knowledge on some more important things.
The record-breaking egg that is immensely well known for the number of likes it received can attest. After talking to my peers about this topic, a lot of them agree that just giving the egg photo a single like makes them feel as though they are a part of something larger than themselves. A like allows someone to be a part of breaking a record and sharing in what I would consider to be fame.
If under-reported global issues got the same amount of attention as this egg, think of how much more our society as a whole could accomplish. Average citizens have the power to raise an immense amount of awareness about highly important things; one like can make them feel like a part of that important something.
I think we need to step back, recognize the power a single post can have, and begin to take action upon what we see.
From time to time, scroll beyond just the memes and the newly famed eggs on any social media platform and utilize these influential resources to become more informed than when you logged in.
