The Academy Awards have been able to survive most of their 88-year history without Twitter. However, now that the social media site exists, it’s become the place to get instant reactions to all of the events that occur on the Oscar stage. Having a moment that gets noticed by a large portion of social media can be something of a badge of honor. Last night saw the most discussed Oscar moment ever on Twitter, and it’s something else that Leonardo DiCaprio can add to his list of accolades.
When Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Twitter exploded. According to Yahoo, 440,000 tweets per minute were fired off by those watching the history making moment. By contrast, Ellen Degeneres’ massive celebrity selfie moment from 2014 set the company's then-record at 255,000 tweets per minute. The popularity of Leo’s moment says something, not only because it set a record, but because it was spontaneous. Ellen’s selfie was an obviously intentional moment to engage social media viewers. DiCaprio just got his statue and made his speech. Twitter did everything else on their own.
Here's Leo's moment:
And here's the moment that Leo beat (sorry Ellen!)
The Best Actor win was not the only popular moment of the night online. The (somewhat surprising) Best Picture win by Spotlight also saw social media buzzing. Although, to be fair, that may have been mostly due to the fantastic Michael Keaton celebration that we loved. Also Mad Max: Fury Road receiving their Sound Mixing award, as it was their sixth of the night, also got the TV audience buzzing. Apparently, Sam Smith’s performance for his, eventually, Oscar-winning song did not get as much notice as we saw it was getting at the time.
While many, if not most, of the influx of tweets, were supportive, you don’t get that much attention online without a certain amount of negativity. Whether it was those who weren’t convinced that Leonardo DiCaprio’s role in The Revenant was truly an Oscar worthy performance, or the fact that he took the moment to discuss the issue of climate change, one has to assume there were plenty of reasons for people to have something to say about the actor.
What were the moments that had you firing 140 characters off into cyberspace? Did you have a favorite, or least favorite, moment that you couldn’t help but talk about? Let us know in the comments.
