A pretend Fb occasion disguised as a math downside has been one in all its prime posts for six months

An almost year-old Fb occasion for a “easy maths competitors” has been some of the 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 latest report on “extensively seen content material” on the platform.

That may be a powerful stat for any single put up, but it surely’s the second quarter in a row wherein 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 keeping with an archived model of the report.

So why is a random Fb occasion that is not likely an occasion getting greater than 100 million views? It could appear to be a repackaging of an previous engagement bait tactic. The header picture for the occasion is a picture of a bit of paper with the phrases “just for genius” adopted by a seemingly easy equation. When shared as a Fb put up, the picture is prominently displayed in a approach that will appear like a traditional picture put up. The picture additionally has some placing similarities to different seemingly simple arithmetic equations which have been going viral on Fb for nearly 15 years.

A have a look at the occasion web page itself reveals that a whole bunch of hundreds of individuals have engaged with the occasion. Greater than 800,000 individuals responded to the supposed July 8, 2024 occasion. Even now, practically a 12 months later, the occasion is seeing common feedback from Fb customers — most of whom are intent on earnestly explaining how the equation must 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 put up has gone so viral months after it was initially posted. I reached out to the account behind the put up, a Nigerian-based creator named Ebuka Peter Ibeh and did not instantly hear again. The put up appears to be way more profitable than some other current posts from Ibeh, who has about 25,000 Fb followers.

In any case, the put up provides an fascinating window into the sorts of weird content material and questionable techniques that also commonly goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta just lately stated it will crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if one of these engagement bait would fall below the class of content material it is explicitly making an attempt to discourage.