A couple of weeks back, a simple photo of an orange, lightly freckled egg became Instagram’s most-like post ever (currently at 52 million likes) surpassing Kylie Jenner’s birth-announcement post from last year with 18.5 million likes.
Turns out that egg post was the work of a 29-year-old advertising creative from London named Chris Godfrey. Why an egg? Godfrey explained in an interview with The New York Times: “An egg has no gender, race or religion. An egg is an egg, it’s universal.
After the birth of the egg on Jan. 4, Godfrey stayed anonymous. But he, and two of his friends, Alissa Khan-Whelan and C.J. Brown, agreed to speak to the publication to tell their story and explain their intentions. “We felt that the time was right to come out,” Khan-Whelan said. “We can put any speculation to bed”.
“People have fallen in love with this egg, and Eugene the egg wants to continue to spread positive messages,” Khan-Whelan continued.
There has been a lot of puzzlement about how a picture of an egg created an Instagram frenzy. Some speculated that the account’s creator had paid influencers to spread the word. Mr. Godfrey says that such claims are untrue and that the account’s growth was “completely organic.”
“I think it was perhaps the younger generation,” Mr. Godfrey said. “In the schools and stuff, it started to spread. It sort of spread through playgrounds.” He noticed that interactions with young people would peak between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, “when school was out.”
Ms. Khan-Whelan recalled seeing “amazing videos of kids in their class going ‘Miss, miss, have you liked the egg?’”
Godfrey and his friends declined to talk about the money the egg post has been offered or the big names it has come into contact with, preferring to keep the attention focused on Eugene.
