2014·The social era·amazing
The Oscar selfie
A crowded photograph taken on stage at the Academy Awards that broke the retweet record and Twitter itself.
You might remember it as Ellen DeGeneres Oscars selfie
A photograph
This Moment began as a photograph, not as a video. Originally published on Twitter.
- SourceNot an upload originally
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
Partway through the 86th Academy Awards on 2 March 2014, host Ellen DeGeneres gathered a row of stars — Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong'o and others — and handed the phone to Bradley Cooper because his arms were longer. She posted it and asked the audience to make it the most retweeted picture ever. They did so before the broadcast ended, passing two million retweets and taking Twitter offline.
It first appeared in 2014, during the social era.
It was the moment a live broadcast and a social platform were deliberately fused in front of an audience of millions, and it worked so completely that the infrastructure failed. The phone was a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Samsung was a sponsor, which made it simultaneously the most spontaneous-looking and most valuable piece of product placement in television history — analysts put it at up to a billion dollars of advertising value.
It provoked a genuine copyright argument — DeGeneres licensed the image to the Associated Press although Cooper had pressed the button — and an unexpected protest, the "sealfie", from Canadian Inuit objecting to DeGeneres's donations to anti-sealing groups. It is routinely listed among the most influential photographs ever taken.
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Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment began as a photograph, not as a video. Originally published on Twitter.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- Partway through the 86th Academy Awards on 2 March 2014, host Ellen DeGeneres gathered a row of stars — Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong'o and others — and handed the phone to Bradley Cooper because his arms were longer. She posted it and asked the audience to make it the most retweeted picture ever. They did so before the broadcast ended, passing two million retweets and taking Twitter offline.