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Eugene the world record Instagram egg: 'It's been incredible'

Don't crack up, but I had an email exchange with Instagram's most-liked photo.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
3 min read

So it's 2019, and everything is backwards. The government's shut down. Britain's breaking up with Europe. A plain ordinary egg is now the most-liked photo ever posted to Instagram , and that egg just emailed me.

The egg photo was posted on Jan. 4, and as of Jan. 15, it has more than 42 million likes. The account, titled world_record_egg, has 6.3 million followers. But so far, no one has been able to crack the identity of the person behind the account.

But I can tell you the egg has a name and is egg-ceptionally thankful for all the attention.

"Eugene the Egg is so appreciative of the amazing support, it has been incredible," the person behind the Instagram account told me in an email. 

When asked about the account's merchandise offerings -- currently, two shirts that say "I LIKED THE EGG" -- the response was, "We're dropping a new design every day, and giving 10 percent of that to a chosen charity."

An Instagram personality who goes by Supreme Patty and has 6.2 million followers was rumored to be behind the egg. TMZ quoted a reported friend of Supreme Patty saying he was responsible, but the egg account later posted to TMZ via Instagram Stories that "we're still anonymous. Fake news."

The egg confirmed this to me, writing, "We deny that we are Supreme Patty," but would offer no more details about his or her identity.

According to the UK Telegraph, the poster of the egg image lives in London, and took inspiration from a list of record-setting Instagram posts from 2018.

"I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and beat the record with something as basic as possible," the egg poster told the Telegraph, "which led to me deciding on the egg."

As for Supreme Patty, although he may not be the person behind the egg, he's having fun with it, and is now urging followers to help break the record for most shrimp emoji Instagram comments on an egg-related post of his own.

He also posted video of himself apparently getting a tattoo of the egg. "You're so gonna regret that wtf," wrote Instagram user joonerboi

View this post on Instagram

All Praise The Egg.

A post shared by Supreme Patty (@supremepatty) on

Turns out there are many famous pop-culture eggs out there.

George R.R. Martin, author of the books that inspired HBO's hit Game of Thrones, got in on the egg-ceptional mockery by tweeting a photo of one of the famous dragon eggs from the show, with the words, "I, too, have a famous egg..."

Or course, someone had to turn it into a "Where's the Winds of Winter?" demand.

Turns out Martin's not alone in his egg yolking. Harry Potter fans point out that their book and movie series also has a prominent egg. Retrieving the magical golden egg was part of the Triwizard Tournament detailed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

But eggs aren't for everyone. Wrote Christine Sydelko on Twitter, "I'm unfollowing everyone who liked that egg photo."

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