A faux Fb occasion disguised as a math drawback has been considered one of its high posts for six months

A virtually 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 latest report on “extensively considered content material” on the platform.

That may be a powerful 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 checklist of extensively considered content material. It additionally appeared on final quarter’s report, throughout which era 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 It will appear to be a repackaging of an outdated engagement bait tactic.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 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 simple arithmetic equations which were going viral on Fb for nearly 15 years.

A have a look at the occasion web page itself exhibits that tons of 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 yr 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 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 another current posts from Ibeh, who has about 25,000 Fb followers.

In any case, the submit affords an attention-grabbing window into the sorts of weird content material and questionable techniques that also commonly goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta lately stated it might crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if such a engagement bait would fall beneath the class of content material it is explicitly making an attempt to discourage.