Entertainment

A kid trying to blag free chicken nuggets is now the second most retweeted tweet of all time

People are trying really hard to get Carter Wilkerson his year supply of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s.
People are trying really hard to get Carter Wilkerson his year supply of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. People are trying really hard to get Carter Wilkerson his year supply of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s.

It’s taken less than a week for a kid who just really loves chicken nuggets to come within touching distance of the most retweeted tweet of all time.

Nevada teen Carter Wilkerson, 16, needs 18 million retweets to get a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets from fast food chain Wendy’s, and the Twitterverse is doing everything it can to get that boy his nuggs.

The tweet was sent on April 6 and has amassed almost 2.7 million retweets – still some way off what Carter needs, but very close to Twitter’s current top tweet.

Wendy’s has actually been pretty good at sharing a lot of the attention the tweet has received, which might be why it is coming so close to the record-breaking tweet sent by Ellen DeGeneres at the 2014 Oscars, which hit 3.2 million.

After all, when was the last time Wendy’s was in the news this much? Microsoft threw their support behind the tweet, and encouraged Amazon and Google to do the same.

United Airlines, who have been in the news recently themselves (although for reasons very different to Wendy’s), offered Carter a free flight to a city with a Wendy’s if he achieves his goal.

And other brands have also been quick to seize on the opportunity.

The CEO of T-Mobile made a pretty unusual, and slightly petty, move.

And Aaron Paul is finding the whole thing pretty inspirational – we reckon his character Jesse from Breaking Bad would very much approve.

It looks like it’s shaping up to be a pretty great year for Carter.