Entertainment

The Oscars Changed The Font Size On The Envelopes Because Of 2017 & Twitter Is Loving It

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The 2017 Oscars will only be remembered for one thing — the Moonlight/La La Land envelope snafu, in which Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty presented the right award to the wrong movie. Oops! To combat this humiliation, the Academy has taken a very big step toward change. They have put a huge font size on the 2018 Oscars envelopes. Of course, fans watching the show took notice.

For those of you who had already fallen asleep before the 2017 show reached its end, La La Land was named as the Best Picture when really it was Moonlight that had been written on the envelope. Dunaway and Beatty blamed the envelopes, saying that they were hard to read because they had accidentally read off the envelope for Best Actress instead. It was exhausting. In any case, it's 2018, and the Oscars have made some big changes — so big that you can probably see them from space. The Oscars envelopes now have the categories written on them in a very large, very bold font that takes up nearly the entire side of the envelope. This must be so that it cannot be possible for producers or presenters or anyone else within 1500 yards of the envelope to grab the incorrect one. One year you name the wrong movie, fine, but two? Two is just a shame.

Because you really can't miss these envelopes, Twitter took notice.

There Were Plenty Of Three Billboards Jokes

Topical humor, guys.

Viewers Saw Right Through The Reasoning

We see you, Oscars.

Others Knew It Was A Sign Of Their Own Eyesight Failing

Hey — everyone gets old at some point. You may as well embrace it.

At least the Oscars can joke about the mixup now. Last year, the auditors of PriceWaterhouseCoopers allegedly handed Dunaway and Beatty the wrong envelope, and that is damn near impossible this year. Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted the Oscars in 2017, said on Good Morning America, "The biggest safeguard there is that this company PricewaterhouseCoopers will literally have to go out of business if they do it a second time. So I think they'll have to be very, very careful."

Interestingly enough, the biggest mistaken reveal in modern awards show history wasn't in 2017 — it took place at the Academy Awards back in 1940. According to the Washington Post, the producers of the show used to issue winner's lists to the local press so that the journalists could get ahead on filing their stories about the awards and who won them. But in 1940, as the winners were scooping up trophies, no one was really acting surprised. Why? Because the Los Angeles Times ignored the 11:00 p.m. embargo imposed by the Academy, and they opted to announce the winners in their evening edition, ruining the whole show of having a ceremony. What's the point of watching the ceremony or even sitting there if the winners were already named?

From 1941 on, no information was given to the press, and the sealed envelope system was adopted as we know it today. As the Washington Post writes, the privacy "started with using envelopes in 1941, keeping each winner separate and sealed and away from any news editors with itchy typesetting fingers. The envelopes became thicker, so they weren’t translucent, and they were guarded and secreted away until mere minutes before the big night began." The envelope system was born out of necessity, and clearly, after the Moonlight/La La Land mixup, it just needs to be perfected a little bit more. This larger font size is a step in the right direction, and if this doesn't work, Twitter will be sure to have many more jokes at the expense of the Oscars.