Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid

About

Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid refers to a child who became involved in pop singer Justin Timberlake's halftime show at Super Bowl LII when Timberlake went into the crowd and stood next to the child for the remainder of his set. During the performance, the child went to take a selfie with Timberlake, leading to a series of jokes on Twitter featuring the child looking at his phone and people imagine what he might be looking at.

Origin

On February 4th, 2018, Justin Timberlake performed the halftime show at Super Bowl LII. During his final song, "Can't Stop the Feeling," Timberlake went into the crowd and sang next to a young boy. Viewers felt the boy seemed awkward and unsure of what to do with himself next to Timberlake. At one point during the song, the boy pulled out his phone, apparently to open his camera to get a selfie of himself with Timberlake.

Spread

Instantly after the moment appeared on live television, people began joking on Twitter about the boy. Mashable tweeted, "Watching this cool teen was the best part of the halftime show #SBLII," gaining over 2,500 retweets (shown below, left). Twitter user @NathanMatisse tweeted "We are all this awkward #SuperBowl tween unsure how to react to an unrelenting Timberlake" (shown below, right).

A popular strand of jokes after the moment involved pairing a shot of the child looking at his phone with an image of what he could be looking at. One of the most popular jokes was tweeted by @JaimeMcCarty and showed the child googling "Who is Justin Timberlake?", gaining over 40,000 retweets and 108,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @Galdytron tweeted an image of the teen texting his Dad "Can you pick me up? I'm scared," gaining over 18,000 retweets (shown below, right).

Later that evening, the boy's selfie was posted by the Twitter account for Good Morning America, gaining over 5,900 retweets (shown below, left). Journalist Dave Mizutani identified the boy as 7th-grader Ryan McKenna from Massachusetts (shown below, right).

The moment became one of the most noteworthy memes of the evening, covered by Twitter Moments,^[1] Uproxx,^[2] People,^[3] and more. McKenna appeared on Good Morning America the following morning.

Various Examples

Search Interest

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