A photo originally taken by Serghei Platanov, who then posted it to Shutterstock on 23 June 2015 was the most liked photo on Instagram, until Messi lifting the World Cup overtook it. What is it a picture of?
Oh egg, you oval wonder.
King of breakfast and maybe even thunder.
Your shell has grace beyond compare.
A single piece of food filled with all nutrients is so rare.
Days are sunny and so are you
Kejriwal is a politician and a dish, I am sure you knew
Benedict are those who eat thee
My favorite is bhurjee.
In this week’s edition we crack open the shell and whip up some fun facts about eggs. We hope you start your weekend sunny side up.
There was a severe crisis in the Indian egg industry in the 1980s. The cost of producing eggs was high, which led to many poultry farms shutting down. Dr BV Rao, the founder of the Venkateshwara Hatcheries Limited, now known as Venkys, believed an Operation Flood-like initiative was needed to save the Egg industry. He formed the NECC (National Egg Co-ordination Committee) and brought thousands of farmers under its umbrella. Operation flood had ‘Manthan’ to spread its word, and NECC needed something similar. He leaned on Mohammed Khan at the ad agency Enterprise. The result was a mass media campaign to educate and obviously sell more eggs. They took the help of a song composed and sung by C Ramachandra from the film Shehnai - Aana meri jaan meri jaan Sunday ke Sunday. Using only the beginning of the song and modifying the lyrics - the ad said “Sunday ho ya Monday, Roz Khao Ande”. It was a super hit ad and helped save the egg industry as consumption increased. The campaign proved that a good idea can hatch an entire industry back to life.
The word ‘egghead’ has its origin in American political slang - it’s a mocking description for someone who is full of ideas but bereft of common sense - much like an egg apparently. A few years later, folks at BBC took a look at this stereotype and decided that it needed a panel of eggheads for a quiz show. This show pitted a group of ordinary folks against a resident panel of very, very serious quizzers (also called Category A quizzers) called Eggheads. Think of folks who can tell you, without blinking, the year a minor river was renamed, the composer of a half-forgotten opera, and the exact number of episodes in an obscure 1970s sitcom. The beauty of the format was how it shamelessly played the original insult for laughs. The challengers are framed as relatable - nice folks who know some stuff, but also have jobs and lives. The Eggheads are framed like a cross between a pub quiz team and a slightly intimidating academic department: calm, precise, mildly smug, and just human enough that you’re allowed to root for them and resent them at the same time. Memorize all 308 issues of this newsletter and you could call yourself an Egghead.
2015 was a more innocent time. You joined a social media network called Twitter and started life there as an egg. The first display photo that appeared on every account before you uploaded your own was an oval egg with a pastel background, waiting to hatch into a bird. The Twitter Egg unfortunately also became the symbol of the dark side of anonymous internet commenters, as bots with this default pic ran amok on the site. The combination of facelessness and default avatar made the egg the unofficial mascot of bad-faith arguments. “Don’t reply to the eggs” was the online generation’s version of ‘don’t talk to strangers’. Twitter wanted the egg to signal potential but the internet turned it into a warning label. In 2017, Twitter finally retired the egg as the tried to unscramble the mess they’d made.
Who did it better - Nafrat Ki Aandhi or Masters of the Universe?
Booze might be even cheaper in Bangalore now. Know more here.
The train may be late, but the fine was on time.
The photo of an egg! This was on an account called world_record_egg which was used to create mental health awareness.
💟 IWTK
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