About

"Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am" is a catchphrase often seen in demotivational image macros when describing a photo of someone or something perceived as awesome, to highlight an awkward moment, or to point out someone’s inflated ego. The phrase is sometimes shortened as "I can't hear you over how awesome I am."

Origin

The phrase first appeared in a story featured on the website Five-Minute Star Trek^[3], which published fan-submitted abridged versions of nearly every episode of the Star Trek series. The line was written in February 2005 by Kira in their rewrite^[1] of the 1967 episode "The Return of the Archons."^[2] Originally attributed to Captain Kirk, the quote was meant to represent the character’s egotistical view of himself after successfully outsmarting a computer. The first demotivational-style image macro with the line was seen on Echosphere.net^[4] sometime before August 13th, 2006.

Kirk: Number of supercomputers outsmarted by Spock: zero. Number of supercomputers outsmarted by Kirk: one.
Spock: But I was the one who told you that logic puzzle in the first place.
Kirk: Sorry, Spock, can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.
Spock: But --
Kirk: Awesome!
Spock: Sigh.

Spread

The image macro series was spotted as early as on August 9th, 2006 in a personal blog post.^[5]

In mid-September 2007, a demotivational image featuring the phrase began circulating around the members of the private military firm Blackwater USA^[14] and soldiers stationed in Baghdad after the firm was involved in a fatal shooting.^[15] The use of the demotivational to criticize the stereotypically hotheaded Blackwater employees was covered on MSNBC^[16] and the Democratic Underground.^[17]

In June 2009, another instance of image macro based on an official portrait of Edmonton's police chief Michael J. Boyd was mass-emailed to the rest of the department and placed on the walls of the police headquarters. The image was read as a sign of the department’s discontent with Boyd's style of leadership and an investigation was subsequently launched to track down the original creator. The story was covered by CBC News^[18] and mentioned along with news of his resignation in December 2010 by iNews Radio.^[19]

I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am” is also used as the title of a World of Warcraft achievement^[13], added to the game in 2009. It can be unlocked by defeating the final boss of the Bastion of Twilight, Sinestra, on the first attempt without losing any party members during the battle.

There are several Facebook groups dedicated to the phrase, two^[10][11] of which have been archived, and a third^[12] which has over 28,000 likes as of March 2012.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References