About

Congratulations, You Played Yourself is a catchphrase spoken by DJ Khaled which means to reveal one's own weaknesses. The catchphrase is commonly applied to images, videos, and other media in which the subject or original poster ends up as the butt of a joke.

Origin

On September 23rd, 2015, Complex uploaded a video in which Khaled shows off his sneaker closet. During the segment, Khaled says the phrase "Congratulations, you played yourself" (shown below).^[1] As of March 2016, the video has received over 2.1 million views.

Spread

The same day, Viner younglame created a video montage of DJ Khaled saying "Don't ever play yourself" and "Congratulations. You Played Yourself.". This Vine received 7.5 million loops as of March 2016. (Shown below.)

The catchphrase went into general use on Twitter in a minor way; an image macro with a still from the Complex video and the catchphrase in yellow text circulated as a reaction image as well.^[2] However, the phrase began to gain in popularity in December, after a series of articles and general attention on DJ Khaled's work in catchphrase and motivational terminology were published. A tweet by user Retro_Specto_ on December 12th that was simply the catchphrase received 671 retweets and 638 likes.^[3] On December 19th, a user in /r/outoftheloop inquired as to the origin of the meme; the post received 29 points (100% upvoted) and was answered accurately.^[4] On December 26th, the sports publication SB Nation tweeted a video in which a woman is caught making fun of LeBron James by the player himself; they captioned the video with the catchphrase, and the tweet received 101 retweets and 141 likes.^[5] On Reddit, the catchphrase has been applied to over 30 popular posts,^[6] including most recently a submission to /r/funny which received 5,186 points (93% upvoted).^[7] There are over 3,000 results on YouTube featuring the catchphrase.^[8] On Twitter, the hashtag #YouPlayedYourself can be used to find examples of the meme in use.^[9]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References