Then Ellen emerged from backstage.
“We just crashed Twitter,” she announced. “We got an email from
Twitter and we crashed and broke Twitter. We have made history!”
It was the first time the site had crashed in Twitter’s eight-year history.
Users who loaded the home page were directed to an error message:
“Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing—we’re going to fix it
up and have things back to normal soon.”
“See, Meryl, what we did? You and I? It’s amazing. We really just made
history. It’s fantastic.”
Ellen went back to the Greenroom, passed the Samsung mosaic of
screens and phones, and approached Jennifer Lawrence, who was
conversing with Glenn Close, cocktail glass in hand.
“Did you hear we broke Twitter?” Ellen asked.
“Well, I’m shocked!”
“We made history. We made history.”
“Someone should have flashed a boob. That’s the only way we should
have shut down the Internet.”
Ellen held up her Galaxy Note.
“We have time!”
Already drowning out talk about whether 12 Years a Slave was better
than Dallas Buyers Club, or who had the gala’s most stunning dress, was this
little simple selfie.
Within an hour, the selfie had more than one million retweets.—
“IT’S NOT LIKE YOU can just sell products,” said the British comedian
Russell Brand the next morning, holding up the UK’s biggest newspapers,
many of the front pages dominated by the Oscars selfie. “You need to sell
the entire context for products. You need to sell the concept of
glamour....All of it creates a frequency of consciousness that’s constantly
spellbinding you in your state where a Galaxy phone seems like a good
idea.”
By that day, the selfie had more than three million retweets.
It was as if Sotheby’s had discovered a new Andy Warhol piece and put
it up for auction.