The Last Time Everyone Watched the Same Thing
No one knew it at the time, but 2014 — more precisely, Ellen DeGeneres’ star-studded selfie moment — marked the peak of a monoculture that no longer exists. The numbers show a long decay ever since.
BY RICK PORTER
At the 2014 Oscars, best supporting actor nominee Bradley Cooper took a selfie with host Ellen DeGeneres and a bunch of A-listers, among them Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Lupita Nyong’o and Jennifer Lawrence. DeGeneres’ Twitter account posted it immediately afterward, and it became the most retweeted post in the platform’s history at the time.
The selfie was an instantly viral moment in a telecast that drew the Academy Awards’ largest audience in 14 years — 43.74 million people. The photo (for which Cooper used a phone made by Samsung, a major Oscars sponsor) became a dayslong news cycle unto itself.
No one knew it at the time, but in retrospect the selfie moment feels like the last stand of a shared popular culture that no longer exists. Monoculture didn’t die with Cooper’s selfie, but that night may have been its last peak.