Not sure about you, but our newsfeeds have been full of people trying to get one over on each other about their literary prowess this week.

It’s all because of an apparent claim by the BBC that the average person has only read six of these 100 popular books – encouraging people to add up how many they’ve read in comparison and share their scores.

It has all the signs of a good viral commodity. Why?

1. It’s elitist in that it says something about the user’s level of intelligence – which encourages competition amongst friends.
2. It stirs up indignance - “how dare they say that!”
3. It doesn’t take much time to answer
4. 100 is a nice round number. People gravitate towards milestone numbers

An oldie but a goodie. A classic example of a content piece that is bitesize, shareable and brings out the bad side of bookworms. Score.