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They're going bananas over this debate: Could 100 men defeat a silverback gorilla?
This outrageous hypothetical has set social media ablaze, fueling heated arguments, AI-powered battle simulations and even drawing reactions from celebrities.
The absurdity of this interspecies showdown has everyone talking, and BetOnline.ag ran a study to see which corner X America is siding with?
The map above is based on geotagged X data in the last week, tracking tweets, hashtags and direct keyword phrases about who would win in a hand to hand fight - 100 men or one silverback gorilla. For example, "100 men would win," "100 men would kill a gorilla," "100 men would defeat a gorilla," #Team100Men, #100Men, etc. versus "the gorilla would win," "the gorilla would kill the men," "the gorilla would beat the men," #TeamGorilla, etc. Over 150,000 tweets were tracked.
As you can see from the map, most of America believes 100 men would defeat a single, silverback gorilla in a fight (or battle to the death). But there seems to be a lot of debate about this (hence the viral argument).
The consensus seems to believe that 100 men could simply overwhelm the gorilla by sheer mass. They also argue that ancient humans took down much larger animals in the past (although they likely had weapons).
Gorilla advocates, on the other hand, say an adult silverback gorilla is simply too strong, with things like a bite force of 1,300 psi (a lion is 650) compared to a normal human of just 162 psi.
Regardless, the debate is certainly one of those strange internet phenomena that pops up from time to time, so it's entertaining to see it play out on social media.
It seems the argument has been around for some time (at least since 2020, primarily on reddit), however it seems to have caught fire in the last week on X, and then crossed over to other social platforms.
Here's the state breakdown:
100 men - 31 states
1 silverback gorilla - 19 states
