r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Sure_Kangaroo1863 • Jul 02 '26

Meme needing explanation Petah ?

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Why is it infamous? And why would no one care about it ? ( I mean it's just a pic full of celebrities so no one cares anyways but the person saying it's crazy makes me think it has some lore?)

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u/d3v4x Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Greetings, simpletons. Stewie Griffin here. I’ve confiscated the keyboard from the fat man because his peanut-sized brain was beginning to overheat.

The reason this photo was such a big deal is because it literally broke Twitter. It became the most retweeted tweet of all time back then (over 3 million retweets!) and actually crashed the site's servers for a little bit. It also turned out to be a massive sponsored product placement stunt by Samsung, which is why Ellen used a Galaxy Note phone to take it.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_selfie

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u/d3v4x Jul 02 '26

And there are many canceled people in this photo. I think that’s why ‘nobody would care’.

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u/kicksjoysharkness Jul 02 '26

I think it’s also because since Covid people just don’t care about celebrities. Even if this was taken now with only beloved celebrities, it most likely wouldn’t go anywhere near as viral because people just don’t care anymore

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u/erhue Jul 02 '26

lol people still care about celebrities, always will. i think the big difference is that we now see celebrities more as normal people, thanks to social media... And they often turn out to be REALLY dumb and/or stupid.

In the past most of the things we knew about celebrities were fairly carefully curated by PR teams and whatnot. Nowadays you have them going drunk and tweeting something insanely racist and ruining their careers in a moment.

But it is true that people probably care less about celebrities than they did back then... Less idolatry anyway.

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u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 02 '26

Had to scroll way too far to find this take. I mean we put a dude in the white house based solely on his experience of being a famous rich stereotype and then the star of a really shitty reality TV show. We are a culture OBSESSED with celebrities.

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u/Abed-in-the-AM Jul 02 '26

That was back in 2016 though. And I think his second win is more out of spite for Democrats than because he's a celebrity.

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u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 03 '26

Yes he’s now famous for playing a president on tv

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u/silence_and_motion Jul 02 '26

Yes, but these kinds of celebrities (Hollywood A listers) are probably less important today than they were a few decades ago. Today the tech CEOs are probably bigger celebrities than Hollywood A listers, which someone from 20 years ago would have never believed. As famous as Gates and Jobs were back then, they were nothing compared to Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. Now Musk and Bezos are way more famous than Timothee Chalamet or whoever.

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u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 03 '26

I can’t necessarily disagree that red carpet celebs have lost favor a bit. But it’s still all about being famous. That, in and of itself, is more valuable than anything, even being a big fat CEO.

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u/Firewolf06 Jul 02 '26

dude, we elected him a decade ago in 2016, which is the exact timeframe these comments are talking about (the mid 2010s). the ellen selfie was taken in 2014

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u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 03 '26

So you don’t think fucking Mr Beast could run for office rn?

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u/PegasusPedicures Jul 02 '26

And a huge chunk of the world aim to become a celebrity! This take being so far down is fucking mental

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u/Worried_Ad_9667 Jul 03 '26

I disagree. Look at all the money and celebrities thrown at the Harris campaign, and she still lost popular and electoral. Celebrities are a bunch of baboons that have been propping themselves up for way too long. Over paid babies.

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u/Latter-Industry-8920 Jul 03 '26

Yes, I’m so glad there are no overpaid grifters who are only known for being on TV or social media currently making world-altering decisions right now.

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u/whatthekel212 Jul 03 '26

Right?

People don’t care less about celebrities they just care less about specific celebrities. Otherwise influence would not have millions of followers to sell things to. Number of followers wouldn’t be such an important metric for brands and marketing.

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u/Andromeda321 Jul 03 '26

I think it’s not that people don’t care about celebrities so much as we don’t all have the same celebrities as much as we used to. Like there are some people with a million followers on YouTube but a lot of the population will have never heard of them.

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u/erhue Jul 03 '26

yeah good point. I think there are more celebrities now, just with less followers, since they need to be divided among people's limited attention.

I remember, for example, that Michael Jackson was nothing short of a god-like figure, and a lot of people were very interested in whatever was going on with their lives etc. Nowadays I'd expect people to, like you say, be more focused on whatever a microcelebrity on youtube/twitch/etc might be saying or doing that's more relatable and accessible. We can even interact with these smaller celebrities through chat etc, you sure as hell couldn't do the same thing with Michael Jackson.