Back in April, a teenager named Carter Wilkerson started a campaign for a year’s supply of free Wendy’s chicken nuggets. Not only did he win his free nuggets, but he also broke the record for most retweets.
It all started when Wilkerson sent a tweet to Wendy’s, asking how many retweets would it take to get a year’s supply of chicken nuggets. The fast-food chain replied an unrealistic amount of “18 million.” Although Wilkerson has not reached that number yet, he’s been doing well. So well he broke the record for most retweets, beating Ellen DeGeneres and her epic all-star selfie at the Academy Awards.
After Twitter announced that Wilkerson had beaten a new record, the accomplishment was recognized by Wendy’s, and the company agreed to provide the Nevada teenager with a gift card for a year’s supply of chicken nuggets.
The food chain also made a $100,000 donation to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which helps to find homes for children in foster care – an objective Wilkerson added a few weeks ago.
Ellen DeGeneres wanted Wilkerson to get his nuggets, but also to keep her record
A couple of weeks after the #NuggsForCarter campaign started, it had reached over 2 million retweets. Naturally, DeGeneres saw the threat to her very well earned title, and asked everyone who retweeted Wilkerson, to also retweet her selfie tweet. She even made a parody public service announcement with Bradley Cooper asking people to retweet her Oscar selfie so she could hold onto the record.
Days later, the comedian invited the 16-year-old teenager to her show to talk about the critical condition of her record. By the time, Wilkerson’s tweet was only 300,000 tweets away from reaching DeGeneres.
Wilkerson said that the day after he sent the tweet, it had already been retweeted 50,000 times, and during the campaign, he went from 150 followers to over 67,000 – 116K by now.
“I want people to retweet you, but when they retweet him, you must retweet my selfie as well,” and she gave him a 55-inch TCL Roku 4k TV and a year’s supply of her famous Ellen underwear, just to encourage him to keep it on the low.
On Tuesday it was announced that Wilkerson had officially broken the record for most retweets. While DeGeneres selfie has been retweeted 3.4 million times till date, in little over a month Wilkerson’s tweet has been retweeted 3.5 million times. Oh, how beautiful, people coming together for good causes, like chicken nuggets and foster kids. What a day to be alive!