A faux Fb occasion disguised as a math downside 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 vital 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 line with the corporate’s latest report on “broadly considered 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 checklist of broadly considered content material. It additionally appeared on final quarter’s report, throughout which era it acquired about 64.3 million views, in line 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 chunk 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 manner that will appear like a traditional picture put up. 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 1000’s of individuals have engaged with the occasion. Greater than 800,000 individuals responded to the supposed July 8, 2024 occasion. Even now, practically a yr later, the occasion is seeing common feedback from Fb customers — most of whom are intent on earnestly explaining how the equation needs 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 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 another latest 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 ways that also often goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta lately mentioned it will crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if any such engagement bait would fall beneath the class of content material it is explicitly attempting to discourage.