Sesame Street's Desert Island Tweet

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Sesame Street's Desert Island Tweet featured a question to followers about which character from the American television series Sesame Street they would take with them to a deserted island.

Origins

On March 18th, 2019, the official Twitter ^[1] account for Sesame Street tweeted, "You’re stuck on a deserted island and you can pick one of these Sesame Street friends to come with you. Who are you picking and why?" They included in the post a picture of the characters (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post received more than 1,800 retweets, 8,600 likes and 6,000 comments in 24 hours.

Spread

Following the post, people responded with which character they would bring, making joke reasons for why. For example, Twitter^[2] user @captainkalvis tweeted, "i woud pick cookie monster. he is the biggest. when i am done eating him, i will make his bones into a boat" (shown below, left).

Comedian Paul F. Tompkins tweeted,^[3] "Elmo is the ONLY choice. Grover: too anxious Cookie Monster: would go through cookie withdrawal & who even knows what his sober personality is Oscar: anyone who chooses Oscar should be on a watchlist." The tweet received more than 1,900 retweets and 14,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below, center).

Throughout the day, other Twitter users shared their picks (example below, right).

That day, Twitter published a Moments^[4] page about the tweet. Several media outlets published pieces on the tweet, including Time,^[5] BuzzFeed, ^[6] Mashable, ^[7] the AV Club^[8] and more.

The following day, the debate was discussed on an episode of the morning talk show Good Morning America (shown below).