Egg breaks Jenner's Instagram record, means absolutely nothing
The news cycle is a never-ending flood of information, some of it inspiring and most of it depressing. From TV to radio — and especially with social media — the news, whether political or more lighthearted, is nearly an omnipresent force in our day-to-day lives. Among all the news over winter recess, there was one story that managed to turn heads and garner amazement, partly due to its sheer absurdity. Not the tiresome persistence of the government shutdown or of Tom Brady Super Bowl appearances, but an egg. More specifically, a picture of an egg, which became the most liked Instagram picture of all time.
Posted by the account @world_record_egg, the picture destroyed the previous record of 18 million likes and at the time of writing sits at 50.4 million likes. But why? Why an egg? Why did people like it? Who started the account, and for what purpose? All valid questions, but none of those answers really matter after a while. It’s clear that enough people saw an egg, liked it and shared it with others. By making the image so mundane, it’s apparent that people just wanted to be a part of something big, or record-breaking even.
Quickly, let’s rewind. What’s in an Instagram like, and why was becoming the most liked important? Befitting of being a product of social media, a “like” is often a way of ascribing social capital, especially when engaging with popular accounts. Celebrities have much more social capital than the average person, and it makes perfect sense why they get the most likes. The previous record-holding photo of Kylie Jenner and her newborn daughter embodies the scenario perfectly. Something newsworthy happened to someone already absurdly famous, so it stands to reason that it became the most popular photo on the platform.
But an egg. There’s no reason for the egg, it’s ordinary in almost every way. The picture subverts what we’ve come to expect from social media, flipping the purpose of liking a picture on its head. The social capital, for this post, was generated through being one of the people who helped set the record, who liked the photo. No spectacle, no celebrity. Just an egg. Still, what does this say about people, social media and poultry?
When dealing with something so menial, it’s hard not to try and ascribe some deeper meaning to it. One could deem it a statement against celebrity culture, showing how meaningless a like on Instagram really is. Conversely you could make it a form of self-referential humor, making a meta-joke out of the cultural currency we breed on social media. Maybe it’s a work of art following in the Dadaist tradition. Maybe we should stop pontificating about an egg on Instagram, because it means absolutely nothing.
Then again, nothingness is an idea that’s already been explored in detail. Absurdism — a philosophical theory which centers the struggle between the human tendency to try and find meaning in life and the impossibility of that search in a meaningless world — flourished in post-World War II Europe as traumatized veterans and citizens tried to come to terms with rebuilding a world exposed to the worst of humanity.
Albert Camus, one of the fathers of absurdism, wrote about the Sisyphean task of living with the hopes of finding meaning. Although this may sound dark, hints of optimism pervade Camus’s work. “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” he said. The search for purpose and peace, in an absurdist estimation, may end in the acceptance that those things don’t exist.
The relentless current of news might be depressing to you. Climate change is an existential threat, the social fabric of America is tearing at the seams and a generation of students are being saddled with crushing debt before they can legally buy a drink. Hope may be hard to find. Among all this, something obnoxiously pointless happened. A picture of an egg became the most liked Instagram post of all time. Now I’m writing about it, and you’re reading it. It’s stupid, but what isn’t?
