A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months

A virtually 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 through the first quarter of 2025, based on the corporate’s latest report on “broadly seen content material” on the platform.

That may be a powerful stat for any single publish, nevertheless it’s the second quarter in a row through which the “maths competitors” has nabbed the quantity two spot on Meta’s record of broadly seen content material. It additionally appeared on final quarter’s report, throughout which era it obtained about 64.3 million views, based on 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 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 publish, the picture is prominently displayed in a method which will appear like a standard picture publish. The picture additionally has some placing similarities to different seemingly basic math equations which were 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 12 months 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 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 much more profitable than another current posts from Ibeh, who has about 25,000 Fb followers.

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