The internet star taking the social media world by storm, is an unlikely one. It is quite literally an egg.

The Instagram account @world_record_egg, has amassed over 40 million likes in less than a month, crushing the record for likes (on Kylie Jenner’s post of her newborn child which had 18 million likes). The internet sensation has grabbed the attention of many famous internet personalities, including Supreme Patty, Kylie Jenner herself, and even the world record holder for retweets, Yusaku Maezawa, a multi billionaire.

The instant virality of this trend has surprised many, including Blaine Bodenstein, sophomore.

“Oh yeah, the egg is way better than her post, and it’s a good influence rather than [Jenner’s] post” Bodenstein said.

The egg started out with no popularity, and went viral very quickly, within a day. The instant virality of this surprised Bodenstein, and the post has garnered a lot of popularity in the last few days.

“I liked the post before it blew up, and I did it more for the meme than anything else, and I have no regrets” Bodenstein said.

The egg post has steadily turned into a meme, rather than a normal post hunting for social media stardom.

So what drives this instant virality, and how does something like this happen? For most viral posts or accounts on social media, paid advertisement has boosted likes or retweets on posts, meaning the rich and famous can dominate social media overall. On Kylie Jenner’s post (which in the past held the record) was largely popularized and advertised by her agent, and her broad sphere of influence on social media and television. The spontaneity of the egg post has shocked the media, and the insane popularity of the post was spread largely by word of mouth, rather than paid advertisement.

One of the mysteries of this occurrence, is the owner of the account, who is strangely staying anonymous. The aforementioned Supreme Patty is one of the assumed owners, along with the fellow instagram account @h3ihei who has claimed that they own the account multiple times on their Instagram stories. Since there is no definite proof of the creator of this account, it appears the identity of the owner will remain anonymous for now.

Now, following this extreme fame comes many wannabe social media stars as well, with hundreds of fellow Instagram accounts posting inanimate objects and attempting to get hundreds of thousands of likes or views. With every trend comes such copycats, and with this such example the “plague” of accounts attempting to get many likes is quite annoying, to be honest.

Overall, this spontaneous stardom is impressive, especially in this era of paid advertisement and fame driving social media popularity.