Flashback to 2019: According to the logic of social media, it was something like the year of the chicken egg.

The experiment of a hitherto unknown account called @world_record_egg, started on January 4th, consisted of knocking Kylie Jenner off the throne, who was the record holder of Instagram likes at the time.

That was Jenner after she posted a birth picture of daughter Stormi in 2018, including her own perfectly manicured thumb in the foreground.

On the other hand, @world_record_egg now competed: with the image of a perfectly shaped and colored chicken egg.

But the egg had to get more than 18 million likes for this.

Today the action belongs in the history books of pop culture.

The egg generated more than 55 million likes.

The year of the patch

Jennifer Wiebking

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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If you will, the year 2021 was then the year of the plaster - the color almost comparable to that of an egg, but the message much more decisive.

It's not just any patch that has appeared over and over again - let's call it - in pictures over the past few months.

("Going viral", as the saying goes about Internet trends, would be linguistically awkward in connection with the pandemic.)

If the stock photo of the year 2021 shows a vaccination bottle that is filled with substance, into which a needle is inserted or that is lined up next to lots of other bottles, as was seen practically every day, then a plaster is shown on the private photo of the year - how it sticks to an upper arm after the corona vaccination.

Vaccinate, photograph, post

It is a “democratic” accessory, which in fashion means pieces for everyone.

This one was even available for free.

Anyone could wear it once everyone got a vaccination offer.

And many wore it, took pictures with it, and posted the photo on social media.

The pavement as an expression of security, freedom, relief.

The industry reacted and put on merchandising: vaccination card covers, sweatshirts, T-shirts with slogans: "Express me, I'm vaccinated", "Team Moderna", "Moderna & Pfizer & Johnson & Johnson" in the style of the famous Beatles T-shirt.

For the Insta account, however, the patch remained the egg under visual evidence of vaccination: successful because it was simple.

And at the same time it was so non-binding that, unlike other documents made of paper or in the app, it never had the potential to be fake.

There was really a stitch under every eggshell-colored plaster.