Upvoting Obama

About

Upvoting Obama is an advice animal image macro series featuring President Barack Obama holding a beer while giving a thumbs up with his other hand. He is also making a frown sturgeon face, which bears resemblance to one he wears in the Not Bad rage face. The images are primarily used on Reddit to express one’s approval of a post.

Origin

The original photograph of Barack Obama was taken by a Reuters photographer on March 17th, 2012 at the Irish pub Dubliner in Washington D.C. The President had gone there to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with Henry Healy, Obama’s distant cousin from Ireland and his friend.

The photograph was syndicated through news outlets like International Business Times^[1] and Irish newspaper the Independent^[3] and posted on political discussion forums including Democratic Underground.^[2] The next day, an image macro about Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies featuring Obama’s thumbs-up photo was posted to the Advice Animals subreddit^[4], receiving 6679 upvotes and 1139 points overall.

Spread

As of September 2013, there are nearly 400 instances^[5] of Upvoting Obama on Reddit and more than 6,000 submissions on Quickmeme.^[6] A similar page with more than 100 examples can be found on the image macro generator site ZipMeme^[7], where it has spawned dozens of instances featuring non-English captions. While Upvoting Obama images have been generally well-received within the Reddit community, its usage elsewhere has been sparse as of May 2012, in part due to its specific reference to Reddit’s “upvote” function. However, these images have been shared on some humor sites including FunnyMama^[8], We Know Memes^[9] and Cheezburger’s ROFLrazzi.^[10]

Notable Examples

External References