Bottoms Up: An open letter to Samsung, Ellen and Bradley Cooper

Hi Samsung, Ellen and Bradley Cooper,

Hope this finds you well.

First, congratulations.

The Oscars were a phenomenal event again and as the eyes of millions turned to the glitz and glam, Bottoms Up’s eyes were too glued to the live coverage. But our eyes, first filled with wonder, soon began to strain with confusion and anger directed at one particular stunt that has generated much international interest.



It’s great that you have celebrity friends around you, but that doesn’t mean you have to take a photo with them and post it online.



It’s commonly understood that we actually invented the awards night selfie in 2013.

I’m sure you remember it, saw it and read about it.



This puts us in a bit of a pickle. Sorry, this puts you in a pickle, right? The first point of contention is ownership. Whose photo is it? In our case, Bottoms Up have had many physical fights over the issue. Many an article online has focused on this aspect of the photo alone, choosing to ignore Kevin Spacey’s toothless smile. Bottoms Up feel the smile is the most confronting issue in the photo but not the most important for the media industry.

It is most definitely a challenge in the social age to establish ownership of content when it’s creation is entirely social.

When everyone has their finger in the pie, whose pie is it?

Well Bottoms Up feel reaching a royalty agreement would be the best for everyone. Bottoms Up would like a mere 5% of the social interest you generated to be transferred to Bottoms Up’s MFA selfie. At the time of writing that’s around 165,673 retweets.

Bottoms Up appreciate your cooperation on this. The last thing we want is this to become a messy public affair waged in the tabloids.

Furthermore, Bottoms Up are free next Thursday morning if you want to meet up for a coffee at 65 Berry St? Should we say 10am? It’ll have to be a snappy because we have another meeting at 10:30am but it’d be great to get an in-person acknowledgment.

Brad, as a personal favour, can you please delete all copies of The Hangover 2 and The Hangover 3 from history? These are terrible.

Thanks again for seamlessly integrating the product into the telecast. Some great content was created.

We’d now like it to be de-created.

From the original creators of irreverent awards night selfies,

Bottoms Up