A 16-year-old used Twitter to ask Wendy's for free chicken nuggets for a year — and it worked

The INSIDER Summary:

• 16-year-old Carter Wilkinson has the most-retweeted tweet of all time.
• It's a plea for free chicken nuggets for Wendy's.
• Wendy's is giving them to him.
• The company is also donating $100,000 to a foundation for adoption.

There is a new most-retweeted tweet of all time. It's an earnest plea for chicken nuggets.

For the past month, Carter Wilkinson, a 16-year-old living in Nevada, has been on a quest to get the most-retweeted tweet of all time, beating Ellen DeGeneres's Oscar selfie.

Flying past Ellen's 3.4 million retweets — and reaching 18 million — would have earned him a year's worth of free chicken nuggets from Wendy's, in accordance with their Twitter conversation.

18 million would have been more than five times the number of retweets Ellen's record-breaking selfie would have had. So Wendy's settled for most retweets of all time instead. On Tuesday, the tweet surpassed that goal and Wendy's said they'll cough up the nuggets.

"You’ve more than earned our respect ... and the nuggets," Kurt Kane, the chief concept and marketing officer for Wendy’s Company, said in a statement provided to The New York Times.

Wendy's is also donating $100,000 to the Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption, which Wilkinson asked his now-104,000 followers to donate to.

And now, finally, Carter has his nuggs.