Oscar selfie
The Oscar selfie is a 2014 selfie taken by actor Bradley Cooper at the 86th Academy Awards, featuring a variety of popular celebrities. The host of the ceremony, Ellen DeGeneres, urged viewers of the ceremony to make a tweet with the picture the most re-tweeted tweet in history, which was accomplished before the broadcast was over at over 2million retweets. The virality of the tweet caused Twitter to temporarily crash and be offline. The photo was taken with a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and was estimated to have been worth up to $1 billion in advertising for Samsung, which donated $1 to charity for each retweet, to a maximum of $3 million. The picture also sparked controversy over copyright laws in the United States in regards to user-generated content on social media after DeGeneres granted the license to Associated Press, despite Cooper having taken the photo. It also inspired the "sealfie", a trend by Canadian Inuit protesting DeGeneres's donations to groups opposed to seal hunting. In subsequent years, it has been named one of the most influential and important pictures of all time.
Photograph
The selfie features a variety of A-list actors and famous movie stars. Bradley Cooper took the photograph, which was then uploaded to the ceremony's host Ellen DeGeneres's Twitter account. The selfie was taken on the smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 3; Samsung was a major advertiser at the Academy Awards. Samsung had spent $20 million for advertisements during breaks between segments at the ceremony. The selfie was taken live during the broadcast of the 86th Academy Awards on March 2, 2014, when DeGeneres left the stage and joined the audience of actors.The celebrities in the photo are Cooper, DeGeneres, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence, Jared Leto, Lupita Nyong'o, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Meryl Streep, and Channing Tatum. Lupita's brother Peter Nyong'o also appears in the selfie, partially obscuring Jolie.
Samsung pledged to donate $1 to a charity of the Oscars' choice each time the tweet was retweeted. It subsequently donated $1.5 million to the Humane Society of the United States and $1.5 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital upon the tweet reaching 3 million retweets in early March 2014; both charities were chosen by DeGeneres. St. Jude's recreated the selfie with some of their patients as a thank you for the donation.
By the end of 2014, the tweet was the most re-tweeted post of the year, peaking at 3.3 million retweets. 255,000 tweets per minute were posted discussing the picture that night. Commentators noted that despite the Samsung sponsorship, DeGeneres had sent the tweet from an iPhone, Samsung's major competitor and rival. Other tweets by DeGeneres during the night were sent via Samsung. Samsung insisted that the selfie was not planned, and that the ensuing popularity was spontaneous. The tweet was valued at an estimated $800 million to $1 billion by Publicis, the company which handled Samsung's international marketing. Samsung was mentioned over 900 times per minute on the site immediately after the incident. The tweet's most-retweeted record was held until 2017, when a tweet by a 16-year-old boy asking for free chicken nuggets from Wendy's broke it. DeGeneres and Cooper had made pleas for people to retweet their tweet and the boy's while on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to maintain the record, while also allowing him to get the nuggets. She later hosted the boy on her show.
"Sealfie" and other campaigns
DeGeneres, who raised awareness for the Humane Society of the United States during the broadcast and raised $1.5 million for them, faced backlash from Canadian Inuit due to the organization's anti–seal hunting efforts. Canadian Inuit who traditionally hunted seals for resources claimed the donation and awareness was in poor faith and spread misinformation about indigenous practices. DeGeneres previously hosted an anti-seal hunting page on her website in 2011, calling the act "one of the most atrocious and inhumane acts against animals allowed by any government". The "sealfie" was posted by Inuit as protest, referencing DeGeneres's Oscars selfie. The photos consisted of Canadian Inuit wearing sealskin clothes, taken as a selfie. The idea came to be by an Inuk youth on YouTube, who suggested the idea of showcasing sealing as an ethical, sustainable, and traditional activity. The campaign began on March 26, 2014, and was popular on YouTube and Twitter. Canadian Inuk singer Tanya Tagaq was a prominent figure leading the campaign.The "sealfie" phenomenon attracted widespread journalistic attention. The Humane Society responded that they are not opposed to Inuit seal hunting, but rather to commercial seal hunting, a position echoed by conservation activist Paul Watson. DeGeneres had not commented on the campaign as of 2023. The campaign was considered "an unprecedented outpouring of contemporary Inuit
political expression" by academics Kathleen Rodgers and Willow Scobie.
The selfie also prompted the "#ashtag", promoting Ash Wednesday and encouraging people to post selfies with ash crosses on one's forehead. After the hashtag had failed to attract attention the previous year, the creator, Mark Alves, was inspired to edit the Oscar selfie and add ash crosses to the actors' faces. This sparked attention online and the tag was used over 3,000 times by March 5. The Church of England also promoted the tag.