# Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid

During the Super Bowl LII halftime show on February 4th, 2018, a 13-year-old named Ryan McKenna was filmed glancing at his phone while Justin Timberlake sang inches away, kicking off a Twitter joke format where users paired the shot of the dazed boy with fake images of what he was supposedly looking at. Within hours he was identified as a Massachusetts seventh-grader, dubbed Selfie Kid, and booked on Good Morning America the next morning.

## Origin
On February 4th, 2018, Justin Timberlake performed the Pepsi Super Bowl LII halftime show at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. During the closing song "Can't Stop the Feeling," Timberlake walked off the stage into the standing-room crowd and spent nearly a minute singing next to a young boy who appeared to not know how to react[1]. At one point the boy raised his phone, seemingly to open the camera and take a selfie with the singer, which gave the format its name[3].

Journalist Dave Mizutani identified the boy that same night as seventh-grader Ryan McKenna from Massachusetts, and People later interviewed him about the moment[2]. The meme format itself did not come from one creator but from a fast wave of Twitter users posting their own mock-up of McKenna's phone screen in the minutes after the shot aired live on CBS[1].

- **Platform:** Live TV (CBS Super Bowl LII broadcast) / Twitter (viral spread)
- **Creator:** Unknown
- **Date:** 2018

## Overview
The joke format built around Selfie Kid is a two-image pairing. On one side sits the broadcast still of Ryan McKenna staring at his phone while Justin Timberlake belts out "Can't Stop the Feeling" directly over his shoulder, and on the other side is an invented screenshot of what he could plausibly be looking at[1]. The humor lives in the mismatch between a once-in-a-lifetime celebrity encounter and the teenager's blank, slightly uncomfortable expression[2].

Typical entries put a Google search for "Who is Justin Timberlake?" on the phone, or a text thread with a parent asking to be picked up early[3]. Other captions guessed at group chats, Fortnite notifications, or boredom-scrolling, all playing on the idea that McKenna was the only person on earth not fully engaged with the performance happening six inches from his face[1]. Mashable and other accounts framed him as a relatable "awkward tween" rather than the butt of the joke, which shaped the tone that carried across most entries[3].

## How It Spread
The reaction started before Timberlake's set even finished. Mashable's tweet calling McKenna a "cool teen" who was "the best part of the halftime show" picked up over 2,500 retweets, and user @NathanMatisse's line about everyone being "this awkward #SuperBowl tween" circulated alongside it[3].

The signature format arrived shortly after, when @JaimeMcCarty posted a mock-up of McKenna typing "Who is Justin Timberlake?" into Google, which drew more than 40,000 retweets and 108,000 likes[3]. @Galdytron's version imagined McKenna texting his dad "Can you pick me up? I'm scared," and gathered over 18,000 retweets[3]. Later that night, Good Morning America tweeted the actual selfie McKenna had taken, which drew around 5,900 retweets[3].

Uproxx and People both wrote the moment up within hours, and Twitter's own Moments team collected the best jokes into a dedicated page[4][2]. McKenna went on Good Morning America the next morning to talk about the encounter, and People later reported that he gained roughly 8,000 Instagram followers off the appearance[2].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid?
It refers to Ryan McKenna, a 13-year-old boy Justin Timberlake sang next to during Super Bowl LII, and the Twitter joke format built around a shot of him looking at his phone[1].

### Where did Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid come from?
The moment aired live on CBS on February 4th, 2018, when Timberlake walked into the crowd during "Can't Stop the Feeling" and stood next to McKenna for the rest of the song[2].

### What does Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid mean?
It became shorthand for being awkwardly stuck inside a huge cultural moment while visibly not caring, which Twitter users captioned with fake phone screens showing Google searches or texts to parents[3].

### How do you use Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid?
The common convention is to pair the broadcast still of McKenna glancing at his phone with an invented screenshot of something boring or oblivious he could be looking at, like a search for "Who is Justin Timberlake?"[3].

### Is Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl Halftime Show Selfie Kid still popular?
The format mostly belongs to the 2018 Super Bowl news cycle, but it is still cited as one of the night's defining memes and McKenna is still recognized as Selfie Kid in retrospectives[2].

## References
1. [http://people.com/music/super-bowl-2018-selfie-kid-explains-viral-moment-justin-timberlake/](<http://people.com/music/super-bowl-2018-selfie-kid-explains-viral-moment-justin-timberlake/>)
2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/justin-timberlakes-super-bowl-halftime-show-selfie-kid](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/justin-timberlakes-super-bowl-halftime-show-selfie-kid>)
3. [https://twitter.com/i/moments/960347206694838277](<https://twitter.com/i/moments/960347206694838277>)
4. [http://uproxx.com/sports/justin-timberlake-super-bowl-phone-kid-funny-meme/](<http://uproxx.com/sports/justin-timberlake-super-bowl-phone-kid-funny-meme/>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/justin-timberlakes-super-bowl-halftime-show-selfie-kid
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