How one man’s desperate search for chicken nuggets turned into an Internet phenomenon…
The famous selfie taken by Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscar ceremony in 2014 has been overtaken as the most retweeted tweet of all time… By a tweet posted by some random dude looking for chicken nuggets.
And it took just over a month to reach the rather historic milestone. Social media, eh?
You may well have heard about it by now, but the tweet that is now officially the most retweeted of all time was posted at the start of April by American high school student Carter Wilkerson, whose request for a year’s supply of chicken nuggets from Wendy’s was met with a challenge to go viral, which was duly accepted.
HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS pic.twitter.com/4SrfHmEMo3
— Carter Wilkerson (@carterjwm) April 6, 2017
Carter hasn’t yet and probably never will reach the ambitious target of 18 million retweets he was challenged to by Wendy’s, but he did attract a hell of lot of attention and support in his quest to do so.
With help from a host of brands, celebrities and influencers, Carter’s tweet has been retweeted over 3.4 million times at the time of writing.
Not only that, but his followers have increased from 138 on April 1 to over 100,000, he is now officially verified on Twitter and the #NuggsForCarter hashtag has a custom emoji featuring a box of Wendy’s nuggets.
As a nod to his success, Wendy’s will provide Carter with a gift card for a year’s worth of free nuggets and a $100,000 donation in Carter’s name to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (@DTFA), which finds loving homes for children in foster care. Carter is also raising additional dollars for the cause on his website nuggsforcarter.com.
.@carterjwm is now the most retweeted tweet of all-time. That’s good for the nuggets, and $100k to @DTFA. Consider it done. #nuggsforcarter pic.twitter.com/k6uhsJiP4E
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) May 9, 2017
With Wendy’s getting some good publicity, a worthy cause receiving monetary benefit and, most importantly, Carter getting his free nuggs, it looks like a win-win for everyone involved.
