The 2014 Academy Awards Meme Roundup

Internet culture is invading the old world of TV more and more each day. I mentioned just the other day how people who’s been watching The Tonight Show since Johnny Carson took over for Jack Paar are now scratching their heads at Jimmy Fallon’s “hashtags” and “memes.” News programs are asking viewers to “Tweet” them. And the Academy Awards program last weekend was not only full of “selfies” and “photobombs,” but the celebrities in the auditorium were fully aware of such things, even more so than the average TV viewer. Or live TV viewer, that is. Many internet citizens caught the high points of the evening on DVR, YouTube, or even Twitter.

The Selfie Seen 'Round the World

Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres highlighted the Samsung Galaxy Note phone, which sponsored the show, by taking selfies with the seated celebrities. It’s the kind of thing that DeGeneres would do anyway. One selfie managed to pack in more than the usual number of movie stars.

When DeGeneres Tweeted the photo, the response was so immediate that Twitter went down for a short while. Within a few hours, it had become the most-retweeted Tweet ever, and within a day it garnered over three million retweets. And the parodies began immediately.

Matt Groening of The Simpsons drew his version of the picture, with a wider angle showing what else was going on just outside the frame.

Brick artist Ochre Jelly (Iaian Heath) went to work immediately to enshrine the scene in LEGO bricks.

Everyone wanted to alter the picture just a little. Find some of the earliest Photoshop jobs in this roundup. My favorite was this scene from The Shining in which you will find some familiar faces -if you look hard enough. Bonus: this one also contains Jack Nicholson.

You can be in the picture, too! Here’s an application in which you can insert your own picture into the selfie. I tried it, but no matter how tiny a picture I uploaded, it was too big to fit in with the crowd. I’m sure there’s some kind of adjustment somewhere, because others have managed to make it work. The selfie shown here is from anabela.cruz.568. 

Adele Dazeem

The next most-talked-about meme from the Oscars was John Travolta introducing Idina Menzel when she sang “Let It Go.” He mangled the phonics of her name so badly that it came out “Adele Dazeem.” Billboard imagined how Travolta would pronounce other singers’ names.

Travolta’s name was properly misspelled all over the internet as Jorm Tramolta, Don Gibraltor, Travis Jarvolta, etc. And Slate invited you to “Travoltify” your own name, with generator that mangles the pronunciation appropriately. David Letterman offered a list of the Top Ten Ways to Mispronounce Idina Menzel. 

But the real winner of the flub was Adele Dazeem. The name that belongs to no one now has a Twitter account in which names are spelled any which way. And the musical If/Then appears to have replaced Idina Menzel with a new actress named Adele Dazeem. 

Someone even made up flyers to insert into the show programs, but it wasn’t the production’s management. And everyone else had a joke to make about it. 

Poor Leo

A lot of the buzz leading up to the Oscars was how Leonardo DiCaprio has made so many hit movies and has yet to win an Academy Award. Would this be his year? He was nominated (for the fourth time), but was not an odds-on favorite for the prize. No one was surprised when he didn’t win, but many were ready with the appropriate images for the internet.

See more of the viral images here.

Jennifer Lawrence Falls Again

Jennifer Lawrence is a wonderful actress and a good sport, but she doesn’t have great luck with evening gowns. Last year’s best Oscar meme was when she fell ascending the stairs to accept her Oscar. This year she managed to trip over her dress walking down the red carpet. Gifboom user ditzkoff, who uploaded this gif, captioned it “Jennifer Lawrence in Gravity 2.” Uproxx dubbed it the “Now-Annual ‘Jennifer Lawrence Trips At The Oscars’ GIF.” We can’t wait to see what dress causes her to do it again next year!

There are more (pizzas, photobombs, etc.), but these are the most popular memes to result from this year’s Academy Award ceremonies. And the images are still coming in thick and fast, because everyone’s a comedian on the internet.