On Twitter, a peanut gallery mocks the Oscars

As host of Funny or Die's "Billy on the Street,'' which airs on Fuse, Eichner aggressively and comically interviews passersby about pop culture. So he's particularly adept at expressing all-caps mockery when it comes to the stars of Hollywood. In the awards circuit leading up to the Oscars, he's zeroed in on Anne Hathaway, the odds-on favorite to win best supporting actress for her performance in Les Miserables.

In Hathaway, Eichner recognizes a great actress, but also a striving theater geek. Nothing is funnier, he says, "than the mix of ego and lack of self-awareness, like Jodie Foster's Golden Globes speech.''

"Ultimately, it's just fun because the whole thing is so ridiculous,'' says Eichner. "It's like, why not comment on it? What is it even there for other than to be commented on?''

The Oscars has become one of the biggest social media events of the year. Last year's telecast at one point set a then-record for 18,718 tweets-per-second. A statuette could be handed out for a new award: most tweeted tweet. In 2011, that honor went to The Onion, which lamented: "How rude – not a single character from Toy Story 3 bothered to show up.''

Last year, The Artist may have won best picture, but Martin Scorsese's Hugo easily bested it with 110,179 tweets to 78,509 for The Artist, according to Twitter metrics analyst TweetReach.

This year, the academy has partnered with Twitter to track the top categories with an index measuring the percentage of positive tweets about the nominees. Leading as of Tuesday wasn't the favorite "Argo,'' nor was it Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln,'' but rather David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook.'' So if the film, widely considered the dark horse in the best picture race, wins on Sunday, Twitter will have predicted it.

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