About

Bronze Medal, also known as Third Place Celebration, is an exploitable image macro series depicting a man receiving a bronze medal on a podium during a sports event while overly celebrating and popping champagne despite coming in third. It’s typically used as an object labeling macro with the bronze-medal winner being labeled as different things and the first-place and second-place winners labeled as someone or something who actually deserves the admiration or recognition.

Origin

On February 7th, 2020, 3palec, the Russian artist who drew this illustration, uploaded the original version to his Facebook^[1] account, receiving over 41,000 shares, 5,500 likes and 317 comments. The original, titled “Never give up!” (shown below), features a man winning the bronze medal and then celebrating excessively by biting his medal, kissing the woman doling out awards, popping a large champagne bottle and then chugging it while standing on the podium next to the first and second-place winners.

Spread

Though the original appeared on Reddit and Imgur before being used as a meme, the earliest example of the illustration being used as a format appears when Redditor^[2] BeepBoopAnv posted their creation to the r/PrequelMemes sub on February 15th, 2020. The upload (seen below) received over 5,100 upvotes and 197 comments.

In the following weeks, several other versions began popping up on various subreddits. On February 16th, 2020, Redditor^[3] Godzilla_original posted another example to the r/HistoryMemes sub depicting the bronze winner as Christopher Columbus reaching America (shown below). The meme was upvoted over 40,000 times and commented on 600 times.

Imgur^[4] user ILiekrocks uploaded a variant using the image as a reaction on February 18th, 2020, under the title, “When your post is mildly popular but doesn't reach the front page.” The upload (seen below) has since been viewed over 114,000 times and received 3,000 points.

On March 11th, 2020, Redditor^[5] Gaia_Maiko posted another version of the meme to the r/gaming sub with the title, “When you finally get a streak.” This post (shown below) received over 86,000 upvotes, 729 comments and a few Reddit awards.

On Twitter, the meme can also be seen being tweeted or used in replies to various posts. One such example is seen in a reply from Twitter^[6] user Himanshoes on April 18th, 2020. The tweet (seen below) was liked 19 times and retweeted another three times.

Bruno Fratus' Celebration at 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics

On August 1st, 2021, at the 2020 Summer Tokyo Olympics, Brazilian swimmer Bruno Fratus won the bronze medal in Men's 50m freestyle.^[7] On the same day, Twitter^[8] user @vinni_pereira used five photographs of Fratus celebrating his medal, including images of him pretending to bite down on the medal, kissing his wife and holding his arms up in triumph, to recreate the Bronze Medal comic. The post gained over 6,400 retweets and 27,300 likes in one day, receiving viral spread on social media through reposts.^[9][10]

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References