A faux Fb occasion disguised as a math downside has been one in every of its prime 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 line with the corporate’s latest report on “broadly considered content material” on the platform.

That will be a powerful stat for any single publish, however it’s the second quarter in a row during which 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 obtained 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 It will appear to be a repackaging of an outdated engagement bait tactic.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 publish, the picture is prominently displayed in a means which will appear to be a traditional picture publish. The picture additionally has some hanging similarities to different seemingly basic math equations which have been going viral on Fb for nearly 15 years.

A take a look at the occasion web page itself exhibits that lots of of 1000’s 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 needs to 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 publish has gone so viral months after it was initially posted. I reached out to the account behind the publish, a Nigerian-based creator named Ebuka Peter Ibeh and did not instantly hear again. The publish appears to be way more profitable than another latest posts from Ibeh, who has about 25,000 Fb followers.

In any case, the publish gives an fascinating window into the sorts of weird content material and questionable ways that also recurrently goes mega-viral on Fb. Meta just lately mentioned it could crack down on creators sharing spammy posts on Fb, although it is unclear if this sort of engagement bait would fall underneath the class of content material it is explicitly making an attempt to discourage.