A Genius Problem?

Saw this on LinkedIn. Well I am not going to bother inserting my answer to the thousands of entries. No one is going to read it, it may be a bait to collect your info to send you junk mail or whatever.

This does not take any genius to do, but the mathematical conscious even first grader should say, dude, 2 does NOT equal to 6, 3 does NOT equal to 12. Nonsense nonsense. And you ask me what does 9 equal? It is simple:

9.

End of problem. Q.E.D. (how do I insert a square icon like most math book does?)

If you want to use describe a pattern... you can say f(2)=6, f(3)=12... The tricky part here is to note 7 and 8 are skipped so it is a trap. So the pattern here is f(x) = x*(x+1), and the answer perhaps the author is looking for is f(9)=9x10 =90. But the CORRECT answer is 9.

Is someone applauding? Who is the author of the question? What is the right answer? I will probably never find out. Good news is: it actually doesn't matter.