Photos of Wilkerson and nuggs via the Wendy's Twitter and Flickr user theimpulsivebuy, respectively
Boy wonder Carter Wilkerson somehow convinced 3.4 million Twitter users to help him secure way too much fast food and outstrip Ellen Degeneres for the most-retweeted tweet of all time, the Verge reports. Now, because we live in the year 2017, the 16-year-old not only holds the most insane internet award of all time but also won a year's supply of free Wendy's chicken nuggets.Just a month ago in April, the Nevada teen "@-ed" Wendy's asking how many retweets he'd need for 365 days of free chicken nuggets, to which the company replied, "18 million."
Advertisement
Celebrities, tech giants, uncomfortably confrontational CEOs, and an army of regular people rallied behind Wilkerson—and on Tuesday, he managed to nab more than 3,430,242 retweets, breaking Ellen Degeneres's record with that infamous Oscar selfie. At that point, Wendy's decided the boy had done enough. He got them nuggs and the fast-food chain promised to donate $100,000 to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which finds homes for children in foster care.
Let's talk numbers for a second. Roughly 3.4 million people retweeted this thing. That's more than the population of Jamaica, more than the combined capacity of the 30 biggest stadiums in America, and more than the number of people who came out to see Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953.During his race to internet stardom, Wilkerson also managed to get 51,000 people to vote on a poll about Wendy's best dipping sauce—which is almost the same number of people who live in Twin Peaks. If it wasn't already clear which sauce is objectively best, barbecue obviously won.In one month, the guy walked away with more chicken nuggets than he'll ever be able to eat, the crown of internet royalty from a famous, beloved comedian, and roughly 105,000 followers on Twitter—roughly equivalent to the entire population of Green Bay, Wisconsin.Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.