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

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 through the first quarter of 2025, in accordance with the corporate’s latest report on “broadly 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 by which the “maths competitors” has nabbed the quantity two spot on Meta’s listing of broadly seen content material. It additionally appeared on final quarter’s report, throughout which period it acquired about 64.3 million views, in accordance 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 It could appear to be a repackaging of an outdated engagement bait tactic.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 approach which will appear like a traditional picture submit. The picture additionally has some putting similarities to different seemingly simple arithmetic equations which have been going viral on Fb for nearly 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 folks 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 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 gives an attention-grabbing window into the sorts of weird content material and questionable ways that also frequently goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta not too long ago mentioned it might crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if this sort of engagement bait would fall beneath the class of content material it is explicitly attempting to discourage.