A teenager who took a selfie with Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl halftime show has become a social media sensation.
Thirteen-year-old Ryan McKenna said on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday that his phone ‘exploded’ with messages and phone calls and he gained more than 8,000 followers on social media overnight.
‘Right after, immediately right after, my phone just exploded,’ he said.
‘My phone is almost dead,’ McKenna said in an earlier interview with the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. ‘I’ve gotten so many notifications. I’ve got like 36 Snapchats, like 21 DMs, and like 150 follower requests on Instagram.’
Ryan McKenna, the teen who got a selfie with Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl halftime show, spoke out about the huge moment on Good Morning America and the Today show Monday morning
The thirteen-year-old from Scituate, Massachusetts said the selfie made up for the sadness of the Patriots’ loss
The Patriots fan from Scituate, Massachusetts says he was unprepared for his brush with fame. Timberlake, he said, ‘just came up and I just like jumped right in there with him.’
‘I’m not going to get that opportunity again, and I just kind of went for it,’ he said.
‘It was just so cool. I was speechless,’ he added.
Ryan also made an appearance on the Today show as well, telling Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb how Timberlake is his favorite musician.
‘I’m a huge Justin Timberlake fan, and that was my favorite song — “Can’t Stop [the] Feeling” — so I was just so excited that he was right there playing that song,’ he said.
He got a shout out from his school, the private Derby Academy in Hingham south of Boston, which tweeted out one of McKenna’s photos.
The teen dubbed ‘selfie kid’, 13-year-old Ryan McKenna, is shown snapping a picture with Justin Timberlake during his Super Bowl LII performance Sunday night
McKenna has been made into an internet meme after being captured staring down at his phone while standing inches from Timberlake
Ryan is also getting some free skiing. He was wearing a sweatshirt bearing the name of Maine’s Sunday River ski resort, which offered him a free season pass.
Ryan’s run-in with Timberlake came at the end of the singer’s performance, when he ran up into the stands to finish out ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’.
The teen became a quick online sensation because he appeared to be more interested in something on his phone than he was in the performance.
But he later explained that his phone had crashed and he was struggling to pull the camera up on his phone to take a selfie with Timberlake.
‘I had a video going, and then my phone got shut off, and I had to pull back up the phone to get the picture going,’ he said. ‘And then I finally got the selfie in the end.’
Though the Pepsi Halftime Show received a mediocre review from viewers, ‘selfie kid’ certainly did not.
‘Selfie kid’ (center) poses with his family. He said he is now the talk of his middle school after he claimed his fame on TV with JT
Justin Timberlake performs next to ‘selfie kid’ during the Pepsi Super Bowl LII Halftime Show at Super Bowl LII Philadelphia Eagles v New England Patriots in Minneapolis on Sunday
McKenna is seen standing just inches from Timberlake as he nears the end of his performance
When speaking of the cool incident, McKenna said: ‘I don’t even know what to think… all my friends have been texting me and stuff. It’s insane’
McKenna’s innocent face made its way around the internet instantly after he starred on the big screen.
Twitter users rejoiced in his heyday by posting a load of hilarious statuses next to the meme.
The main meme shows McKenna staring down at his phone during the cool moment alongside captions like, ‘*posting to Snapchat* … don’t know who I just took a picture with but my mom is going nuts.’
Another priceless caption next to the photo said: ‘I thought you said Justin Bieber.’
While another read: ‘portrait of a teen following Justin Timberlake in real time.’
A slew of Twitter users posted hilarious statuses next to the meme of McKenna staring at his phone
