65-year-old man gunning for Ellen’s retweet record and it actually might happen

Terry Simpson started a joke and 130K retweets later the joke is turning into a serious possibility.

On Tuesday, two days after Ellen’s epic Oscars selfie, Simpson tweeted a photo of himself and his two pups to his five Twitter followers and joked “Let’s see if we can beat the Oscar re-tweets.”

In a matter of hours, things got nuts.

“I was just totally amazed,” Shipman told TODAY.com. “It was just kind of as a lark last (Tuesday) evening. Obviously I saw the selfie being taken on the Oscars, and then I did see the photo on the Internet and saw she had three million-plus retweets.

“I took that photograph, tweeted it to my son who was at a Houston Rockets game, then he and his roommate retweeted it a couple times, and then their phones started blowing up. My daughter was then calling saying it had been retweeted 900 times, and that this was a big deal.” Shipman’s tweet was soon picked up by celebrities like supermodel Chrissy Teigen.

As of right now, Terry, a Yorkshire Terrier named Max and a poodle named Oreo and their selfie has been retweeted over 130,679 times.

Now, it’s going to take a small miracle to top Ellen’s 3.2 million retweets, but an old man and two cute dogs might just have the fire power. Especially if enough celebs get on board and all the people who despise celebrity culture step up and start smashing the retweet arrow.

Texas man, 65, going for Ellen’s retweet record: ‘I’m flabbergasted’ [Today]