Obama Medal Meme: Template, Meaning and Captions
The Obama medal meme is a digitally altered photograph in which Barack Obama appears to hang a medal around his own neck. It labels self-congratulation: one side is the version of you taking credit, the other is the version that did the work.
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Where the Obama medal meme comes from
On 22 November 2016, Barack Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 21 recipients. The list included Bruce Springsteen, Ellen DeGeneres and Michael Jordan. Getty Images posted several hundred photographs from the event, and among them was a shot of Obama placing the medal around the neck of Springsteen.
That is the source image. Everything else is manipulation.
On 11 January 2017 the satirical news site The Barbed Wire published an article headlined that Obama had awarded himself a greatest president ever medal during his farewell. It ran an edited version of the Getty photograph in which the recipient had been replaced with a second Obama, so that the president appeared to be decorating himself. Know Your Meme records the editor as unknown; the site published the image but no source consulted attributes the edit to a named person.
The following day, 12 January 2017, an unidentified Reddit user posted the first known meme built on that image. From there it moved quickly into general image-macro use, and within weeks it had detached from its satirical origin entirely.
Two things are worth stating plainly, because a lot of secondhand write-ups get them wrong. The self-awarding photograph never happened — no such moment occurred at the ceremony or anywhere else. And the medal in the real photograph was being presented to a musician, not received by the president. This page documents the format and takes no position on Barack Obama, his presidency, or any political question attached to either.
What it means and when to use it
Despite the political provenance, the working meaning of the format today is almost entirely apolitical. It is the self-congratulation meme. Two labels, both usually beginning with the same word — me — with the giving Obama representing the part of you that wants credit and the receiving Obama representing the part that actually did, or failed to do, the thing.
The best examples are ones where the same person is both parties and the achievement is embarrassingly small. Solving a problem you personally created is the purest version of the joke, because the picture already shows one man doing both halves of a transaction.
| Caption approach | Reads as | Correct use? |
|---|---|---|
| Me for fixing the bug — Me who wrote the bug | Closed loop, self-inflicted, funny | Yes — the strongest form |
| Me for making the bed — Me who will get back into it | Trivial achievement, mock ceremony | Yes |
| Company X — Company X, for fixing the outage it caused | Institutional self-praise | Yes — works, slightly sharper register |
| Two different unrelated parties | Just an award, no irony | No — the joke requires the same entity twice |
| A political claim about Obama or any real figure | Commentary on a real person, using a fake photograph | No — the image is fabricated and reads as evidence to anyone scrolling past |
That last row is the one that matters. Because the edit is photorealistic, it is uniquely prone to being mistaken for a real news photograph, which is a problem no cartoon template has. Keep the caption obviously comic and obviously about you, and that risk disappears.
Captions that work
Two boxes. The first labels the Obama presenting the medal, the second labels the Obama receiving it. Start both with me wherever you can — the repetition is what signals to the reader that this is a closed loop rather than a genuine award.
- devMe for fixing the bug Me who wrote the bug in the first place
- domesticMe for making the bed Me who is getting back into it in 20 minutes
- relatableMe for finding the charger Me who lost the charger
- workMe for replying to the email Me who left it unread for nine days
- socialMe for cancelling the plans Me who made the plans while drunk
- foodMe for cooking dinner Me who put a ready meal in the microwave
- sleepMe for setting six alarms Me who will silence all six
- domesticMe for taking the bins out Me, the only other person in this household
- wellnessMe for staying hydrated Me who had one sip of water and a litre of coffee
- fitnessMe for finally using the gym membership Me who has paid for it since March
- techMe for closing 40 browser tabs Me who will reopen 38 of them tonight
- workMe for spotting the typo Me who approved the document yesterday
Variants and close relatives
| Format | How it differs | Use it instead when |
|---|---|---|
| Three-label Obama medal | Adds a label on the medal itself | The award needs naming to make sense |
| Two Spider-Men pointing | Two identical figures accusing each other | The joke is mutual blame rather than self-praise |
| Roll Safe tapping head | Single figure, flawed reasoning | You are mocking the logic, not the credit-taking |
| Handshake meme | Two labelled arms agreeing on one thing | Two genuinely different parties share a position |
| Original unedited Getty photograph | Real presentation to a real recipient | You are writing about the actual ceremony, not making a joke |
Common mistakes
Labelling two different parties. The single most common error. If the giver and the receiver are not the same entity, you have drawn an ordinary awards ceremony and the format contributes nothing.
Treating the image as a real photograph. It circulates widely without context and gets reposted as though it documents something. It does not. The moment is fabricated, and repeating it as fact is how a joke turns into misinformation.
Making the achievement genuinely impressive. The ceremony in the picture is grand, so the caption has to be small. An actual accomplishment played straight is just a boast with a president attached.
Attaching current political claims. The template survives because it stopped being about politics around 2017. Dragging it back turns a broadly shareable joke into an argument, and puts a fabricated image in service of a real-world assertion.
Long labels. The two figures occupy most of the frame, and the usable text space is narrow strips at the sides. Anything past roughly ten words collides with a face.
Limits and etiquette
This format is nearly a decade old and it shows. It is instantly readable to anyone who was online in the late 2010s, and increasingly unfamiliar to people who were not. Where a newer self-congratulation joke exists in a given community, it will usually land better. The Obama medal template survives on clarity rather than freshness.
It also carries a specific responsibility that most templates do not. The subject is a real, living former head of state, and the image is a photorealistic fake derived from a real news photograph. That combination is exactly what fact-checkers spend their time unwinding. The safe posture is the one the meme has settled into naturally: the caption is about you, the joke is about self-praise, and nothing in it makes a claim about the man in the picture.
Rights-wise, the underlying photograph is a Getty Images news photograph and the meme is an unlicensed derivative of it. Personal and editorial use is the norm online; commercial use is not cleared, and pairing a fabricated image of a public figure with a product carries publicity and defamation exposure on top of copyright.
The frame on this page is third-party material hosted here so you can caption it. If you hold rights to it and want it removed, use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Obama medal photo real?
No. It is a digital edit. The original photograph shows Barack Obama presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the musician Bruce Springsteen. The second Obama was added later by an unknown editor.
When was the original photo taken?
On 22 November 2016, at a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony honouring 21 recipients, among them Bruce Springsteen, Ellen DeGeneres and Michael Jordan. Getty Images published several hundred photographs from the event.
Where did the edited version first appear?
On the satirical news site The Barbed Wire on 11 January 2017, illustrating a joke article about the president awarding himself a medal. An unidentified Reddit user posted the first known meme built on it the next day.
Who made the edit?
Unknown. The site that published it did not credit an artist, and no source consulted names one.
What does the Obama medal meme mean?
Self-congratulation. Both labels normally refer to the same person or organisation, so the picture shows someone handing themselves an award, usually for solving a problem they created or for an achievement far too small to deserve a ceremony.
How many text boxes does it use?
Two. One labels the Obama presenting the medal and one labels the Obama receiving it. A three-label variant that also names the medal circulates but is less common.
Is the meme political?
It began on a satirical politics site, but its ordinary use since 2017 has almost nothing to do with politics. The overwhelming majority of examples are jokes about the poster taking credit for something trivial.
Is it still worth using?
It is well past its peak and reads as a template from the late 2010s. It remains instantly legible to anyone who was online then, so it still works, but a newer self-praise format will usually feel more current.