Oscars 2017: Twitter Dunks On Warren Beatty Over ‘Moonlight’ Best Picture Flub

Twitter had the jokes after “La La Land” was accidentally named Best Picture

Warren beatty Faye Dunaway best Picture
onstage during the 89th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 26, 2017 in Hollywood, California.

The 2017 Academy Awards ended on a shocking note when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway read the wrong Best Picture winner. With the wrong envelope in hand, the pair announced “La La Land” as the winner of Best Picture Oscar. But during the acceptance speech, the mistake was realized. The real winner was “Moonlight.”

The first reactions across the Internet were of the “wait, what?” variety. “La La Land” was a heavy favorite to win the award, and took home six other awards. But seconds later, the Twitter jokesters turned their attention to Beatty, who tried to explain the flub on stage. The unprecedented mix-up wasn’t really Beatty’s fault, but the memers and tweeters can’t really help themselves. (Oscars accounting firm PwC soon came forward to take the blame for the error.)

Of course, most thoughts immediately went to the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump won the Electoral College and took the presidency, but Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Twitter users hoped maybe Beatty’s Oscar mistake could be repeated for the country.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s comments that Trump’s Inauguration had the largest audience in history also popped to mind. With Spicer comes Melissa McCarthy’s portrayal of him on “Saturday Night Live,” of course.

https://twitter.com/SarahLerner/status/836083245917732866

Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Steve Harvey’s gaff of announcing the wrong winner at the Miss Universe competition in 2015.

https://twitter.com/KMiss23/status/836081691567456264

People also remembered that time Kanye West tweeted in favor of Bill Cosby.

https://twitter.com/kath_krueger/status/836082102072393730

And somebody caught on that the “Bonnie and Clyde” reunion with Beatty and Dunaway might have been more of a clue about what was going on that people first realized.

There were also “Bulworth” jokes to make.

And, of course, somebody had to make a Dick Tracy joke.

But mostly people just had some pretty hilarious digs on Beatty and the struggle to figure out what was actually written on the envelope. In Beatty’s defense, he recognized that “Emma Stone, ‘La La Land’” wasn’t the right one for Best Picture. Whoops.

https://twitter.com/Seinfeld2000/status/836081763109732353

Even future-seeing statistician Nate Silver was stumped. Earlier in the night, Silver had tweeted Oscar some algorithm-created Oscar predictions.

Not so fast, Nate.

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