TwitterIt was the selfie seen 'round the world. Two years later, it has been demoted by this signature 2016 Oscar moment.
When Ellen DeGeneres gathered the most celebrated actors and actresses of 2014— Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts to name a few—the selfie that followed went on to break the Internet, temporarily take down Twitter's servers and ignite a record-breaking 255,000 tweets per minute of the candid moment.
"I thought it would crash," DeGeneres told E!'s Marc Malkin at the Governors Ball two years ago. "But I didn't know everyone would do it."
In fact, it grew to become one of the most mimicked moments of the night. Celebrities followed DeGeneres' lead in the months ahead, using nearly every public opportunity to take a jumbo-sized selfie from stages, stadiums and other awards shows.
While Ellen's Oscar selfie will live on infamy, according to the metrics, it has officially been dethroned by a far more anticipated 2016 moment—Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar win.
After more than 20 years and six Academy Award nominations, 2016 was decreed the year Leo would finally win the gold for his boundary-bending lead performance in The Revenant. As legions of fans crossed their fingers and hoped that DiCaprio would finally take the stage as one of the night's victors, when the moment finally came to fruition, the digital world exploded.
As presenter Julianne Moore uttered his name, the moment generated more than 440,000 tweets per minute, the most-tweeted minute of an Oscars telecast ever, according to the social media company. The star gushed over the win with overflowing gratitude.
"Thank you all so very much. Thank you to the Academy, thank you to all of you in this room," he told the crowd after receiving a standing ovation. "To my parents, none of this would be possible without you. My friends, I love you dearly. You know who you are."
Despite having to wait two decades, DiCaprio finally took home two Academy Award accolades—Oscar and Twitter gold.