Editorial: Celebrityship scrambled by a world-famous egg

Social media has now added a perplexing dimension to the concept of celebrity. Photo / Instagram

'In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes," the late artist and director Andy Warhol said in 1968.

Half a century on and Warhol's now infamous one-liner could extend to everything.

That's because this week a hen's egg - as plain as the one you could poach, scramble or fry for your breakfast this weekend - received more popularity on social media platform Instagram than reality TV celebrity Kylie Jenner.

Jenner has 124 million fans on Instagram, who keep up with the details of her life on the photo-sharing service, and 18 million of these fans "liked" a photo of her announcing the birth of her baby last February.

That set the world record for the most likes of any photo on the platform until this week.

Rather than being dethroned by a fellow celebrity, Jenner this week lost her crown to a common brown egg that a user posted to Instagram with the seemingly vain hope of claiming the title.

View this post on Instagram

Let’s set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this 🙌 #LikeTheEgg #EggSoldiers #EggGang

A post shared by Eugene | #EggGang (@world_record_egg) on Jan 4, 2019 at 9:05am PST

At time of writing, the egg (under the Instagram account name world_record_egg) has garnered close to 48 million likes - more than twice of those for Jenner's post.

This is a perfect illustration of the chaotic nature of internet culture, where the most unbelievable (and often ridiculous) things are always possible.

Fame has always been fleeting, but social media and the internet has now added a perplexing dimension to the concept of celebrity and what gets public attention.