One Million Facebook Likes Pleas

About

One Million Facebook Likes Pleas are ad hoc campaigns launched by individuals seeking to raise one million “likes” on the social networking site in order to win a bet in real life. Each post is typically accompanied by a photograph of the pleader and the pledger, along with a poster sign revealing the prize at stake.

Origin

The earliest known “one million likes” drive on Facebook was launched by the international charity group Free The Children to promote its annual youth empowerment event We Day in September 2010, not long after Facebook released its “like” button feature in April. Free the Children pledged that for every person who “likes” We Day’s Facebook page, its sponsors will donate $1 to the charity.

However, the first casual instance of “One Million Likes” plea to go viral came in November 2012, after Dan Urbano from Newton, Massachusetts made a bet with his children that if their picture asking for a cat got 1,000 likes on Facebook, he would make their wish come true. Within hours of posting on November 7th, the Facebook plea made by Urbano’s children surpassed its goal and by November 12th, it had received more than 110,000 likes and 100,000 shares.

Spread

On January 15th, 2013, another Massachusetts resident Ryan Cordell jokingly promised his daughters that they could get a new puppy if they managed to gain one million likes on Facebook, after reading the Urbano family’s story. In less than 24 hours, the Facebook page “Twogirlsandapuppy” started by Cordell’s children drove more than 1.2 million likes. The story was covered on the following day by several news outlets, including ABC’s Good Morning America.

On January 17th, 2013, Norwegian college student Petter Kverneng posted a picture of himself and his high school friend Cathrine while holding up a sign that read:

“Cathrine says that if I can get 1M. ‘LIKES’ she will have sex with me. Please share and like!”

Within the first 24 hours of its launch, Kverneng’s image went viral and surpassed its goal. According to several blog posts and news articles highlighting Kverneng’s petition^[2], the million Facebook “like” drive reportedly began picking up steam after the image was posted on 4chan’s /b/ (random) board in the late evening. By 9 a.m. (ET) on January 18th, the image post had reached more than 570,000 likes with 33,000 shares. Fueled by the morning news and blog coverage^[2]^[3]^[4], the post broke through one million likes before 11 a.m. (ET).

Notable Examples

Kverneng’s viral stunt reinvigorated the online interest in “one million likes” challenges, even spawning a number of parody poster signs of the previous campaigns.

Baby Names

Several Facebook users have created pages promising to give their new baby various humorous names after 1 million likes have been reached, including the fantasy novel protagonist Harry Potter,^[28] the lasagna pasta dish.^[26] and the Transformers characters Optimus Priime^[24] and Megatron.^[20] In response to the Transformers like pages, parodies were made promising “1 million Megatrons and my wife has agreed to call our baby ‘Likes’”^[18] and “1 million likes and my Decepticon has agreed to call our baby Paul.”^[19]

Intervention

On July 30th, 2011, a page titled “If I Get One Million Likes, My Mom Will Stop Drinking”^[25] was launched, which was followed by the creation of three other parent invention pages the following year.^[13]^[14]^[15] In January of 2013, a page promising to stop his girlfriend’s abortion after receiving one million likes was launched.^[12]