What Is The “Obama Awards Obama” Meme? Origins, Meaning & Why It’s The Ultimate Self-Congratulation
The “Obama awards Obama” meme is an edited image of Barack Obama that depicts Obama awarding himself a medal, satirically mocking self-congratulation and grandiose achievements.
The meme comes from a White House photo, taken in 2016, and gained prominence around 2017 when it became a viral meme on Reddit and Twitter.
It quickly became a quintessential way to mock a person for being narcissistic, whether it has been used with sarcastic captions or in edited versions on TikTok.
This social media artifact signifies Barack Obama’s enduring legacy in internet culture, and also serves as compelling social commentary.
1. What Is the “Obama Awards Obama” Meme?
What does the meme show and how is it used?
The “Obama Awards Obama” meme is a digitally manipulated image of Barack Obama, the former president of the United States, pinning a medal onto himself.
The image is based on an actual White House ceremony, using a swap of Obama’s face onto the awarded person’s body, to create a humorous suggestion of self-award.
Because it’s essentially a self-congratulatory meme, it’s perfect for making fun of self-congratulation, performative praise, or inflated accomplishments—we are talking about influencers bragging about their own posts, or companies bragging about meaningless awards.
Its versatility comes from its fundamental simplicity—this is what keeps it in circulation as a popular sarcastic commentary image online.
Is this the most iconic self-praise meme ever?
Arguably, yes. Combining Obama’s generally recognizable persona with biting digital sarcasm, it works as a universally understood jab at ego.
What makes it different from other self-praise memes is the political imagery that provides an extra bit of irony that offers a broader resonance, from casual social media to pointed political critique.
Its longevity comes from how easily we can adapt it to even the slightest scenario where someone is patting themselves a little too hard.
2. Where Did the Meme Come From?
The unedited context
On November 22, 2016, then-President Barack Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 21 recipients, both living and deceased, including figures like musician Bruce Springsteen, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, and former athlete Michael Jordan.
That same day, Getty Images released hundreds of photos from the ceremony, including one capturing Obama awarding the medal to Springsteen.
On January 11, 2017, the satirical news site The Barbed Wire published an altered version of this photo, created by an unknown editor, depicting Obama seemingly awarding the medal to himself in an article titled “Obama Awards Himself ‘Greatest President Ever’ Medal During Farewell.”
How it went viral
The edited image first took off around 2017 on the community sites Reddit and Tumblr, in many meme-heavy communities such as r/memes and r/politicalhumor.
The meme was posted in many different ways. When Twitter blew up, the meme was greatly used to give quick, ironic replies to those who inflated their achievements and accomplishments above their own needed level of thrusting themselves forward.
In many instances, this continued broadly until 2018, but the meme stayed consistent due to the ever-present situations of political debates, PR disasters by corporate entities, and everyday scenarios of people thriving in ego trips.
3. What the Meme Means & Why It Hits So Hard
The meme as a critique of self-praise
The “Obama Awards Obama” meme is, at its core, a satirical commentary on self-promotion.
It is used to call out people—politicians, influencers, companies, or even friends—who are overhyped and promote themselves as something they are not.
For example, if a brand has a “self-award” or badge saying they are “sustainable” or when an influencer declares they have “$500 a month impact”, this meme works perfectly to sum them up.
Because this is such a sharp critique of ego, it is a popular meme type to expose hypocrisy.
Why it makes people laugh
The meme resonates because it is an example of a collective frustration of people dealing with the ridiculous sportsmanship of empty praise.
The empty praise is, in essence, the actions between a coworker who takes credit for a project that was worked on as a team or a politician who praises themselves, mentioning something they achieved that is basically useless per their own frame of reference.
An image of a smug Obama giving himself a medal resonates on that level, which is funny.
Obama is also a likable person, so the act of taking the image from an event where real medals are awarded and picturing a narcissist taking the podium in that event to award himself is a bit of visual commentary.
The image is also fairly neutral in that taking it on face value with “Obama” as the title gives us a neutral stance but yet goes on to mention we are addressing something with narcissism. It feels clever, not cruel.
4. Popular Meme Formats and Caption Variations
Classic Image Macros
The most common format is the static image with captions like:
- “When you finish your own group project and give yourself full credit.”
- “Me liking my own post on Instagram.”
- “When Netflix puts its own movies in the popular section.”
These captions, often shared on Reddit’s r/memes or Twitter, amplify the meme’s humor by tying it to everyday scenarios of self-praise.
Meme Variants and Video Edits
In addition to static images, the meme has evolved beyond images into animated GIFs and TikTok videos.
Some versions of the meme include sound bites, like the Obama “pretty good” sound bite from his mic drop at the 2016 White House Correspondents Dinner.
Others replace Obama with figures like Elon Musk or other fictional characters but preserve and keep the self-award angle consistent.
It is on TikTok where many of these edits are thriving. TikTok creators use self-awarded memes of any subject while layering them with trending audio for maximum virality.
5. Where the Meme Thrives and Who Uses It
Platform Spread
The meme is a cross-platform star:
- Twitter: Often used in reply chains to dunk on self-promotional tweets, especially during political or corporate controversies.
- Reddit: Popular in subreddits like r/memes, r/politicalhumor, and r/brandfail, where users mock overhyped marketing or political stances.
- TikTok: Reaction clips and satirical voiceovers keep the meme fresh, often paired with trending sounds.
Community Use
Meme creators, political commentators, and student meme pages drive its popularity.
Gen Z and Millennials, with their knack for ironic humor, use it to poke fun at everything from academic overachievers to corporate buzzwords.
Its broad appeal lies in its ability to critique without being overly niche.
6. Will “Obama Awards Obama” Stay Relevant?
Reuse during award season, election cycles, and viral cringe moments
The meme flourishes during award seasons (Oscars, Grammys) or campaign exercise cycles when self-congratulatory moments are primed for parody.
“Obama Awards Obama” is also recycled intermittently whenever an individual or brand embraces a despicable, cringeworthy moment as public self-praise, ensuring its clunky and cyclical significance.
Ranking among political satire and meta-humor memes
The meme stands confidently alongside the perennial classics of “Dark Brandon,” “Thanks, Obama,” “Crying Trump,” and “Bernie Mittens.”
Its legacy lies in its meta-humor-mocking, not just an individual, but the act of self-praise itself, rendering it evergreen in an era of content that draws from self-congratulating, narcissism.
Conclusion
The “Obama Awards Obama” meme is not just an amusing image—it’s a critique of our culture wrapped in exceptional humor.
Commencing from a photo taken by Getty Images for the White House in 2016, it gained widespread popularity because it captures our tendency to congratulate ourselves whenever we get the chance.
It is not only able to spread virally on Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, etc.; it is able to call out self-important ego no matter how grand or self-centered, from corporate bubbles and continuous self-hype to personal self-praise.
Additionally, as long as people continue to create and post about themselves and self-promotion, I guarantee that it will continue to be a witty and wonderful description living right in the middle of performative self-congratulation.
