About

Cristiano Ronaldo Winning Award, also known as Cristiano Ronaldo Accepting Award or Cristiano Ronaldo Getting An Award, refers to a video and GIF of professional soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo walking up to a stage, dressed in a suit and tie, and accepting an award at the 2016 FIFA Football Awards. The video clip is most often used in an ironic context, with meme creators on Reddit and YouTube pairing the exploitable with captions that outline simple achievements in contrast to the dramatic acceptance.

Origin

On January 9th, 2017, the annual FIFA Football Awards were held for the 2016 season.^[1] Among the winners were Real Madrid player Cristiano Ronaldo, who won "The Best FIFA Men's Player" for the year. When his name was announced, Ronaldo kissed his wife, got up from his seat and walked up to the stage as the camera followed him, smiling and waving the entire time. On the same day, the official YouTube channel of FIFA uploaded the clip of him accepting the award, earning roughly 3.4 million views over the course of five years (shown below).

Over the course of four years, the video didn't receive much use in memes. It wasn't until May 15th, 2021, that Instagram^[2] page crsevn.7 posted a Reel that used the video of Ronaldo walking up to the stage, paired with the song, "Stereo Hearts," performed by Gym Class Heroes and Adam Levine. The Reel followed a typical "glow-up" format, showing a progression from a child version of Ronaldo to him accepting the award (shown below). Over the course of seven months, it received roughly 37,000 likes.

Spread

Following the initial use of the video as a meme in May 2021, the format spread to other sites. For example, on July 16th, the video was turned into a GIF, posted to the site Tenor^[3] by the user poggerscr7 (shown below).

The video was used as an exploitable en masse starting in November 2021 on TikTok. The video on the platform that started the trend was posted on November 7th by TikToker^[4] publad, who used the song "Stereo Hearts" for the audio and captioned the video, "When I'm half way thru watching a film on 123movies and win a free iPhone 13." The TikTok (shown below) received roughly 95,100 likes over the course of three months.

On November 9th, TikToker^[5] publad posted another TikTok using the video, this time captioning it, "Me after i saved the planet by posting a picture of my dog on my insta story," earning roughly 8,700 likes over the course of three months (shown below, left). On November 10th, 2021, TikToker^[6] bikelife__uk used the video in a TikTok, captioning it, "Me when I leave the lettuce in my Big Mac," earning over 100 likes, also over three months (shown below, right).

On November 11th, 2021, a Ronaldo winning award meme was posted to Reddit's /r/shitposting^[7] by Redditor Zapchatowich, who replicated publad's TikTok into GIF form. The post (shown below) received roughly 44,800 upvotes over the course of two months.

On November 13th, the YouTube channel sniffercs posted the video of Ronaldo walking up to the stage and accepting the award with the song "Stereo Hearts" dubbed over it (shown below). Over the course of three months, the video gained roughly 67,100 views.

"Thought love was dead, but now you're changing my mind. My heart's a stereo. It beats for you, so listen close. Hear my thoughts in every no-o-o-te."

On Reddit, the video was uploaded to the /r/MemeTemplates^[8] subreddit where it received over 160 upvotes in one month. Overall, the meme trended as a popular GIF Caption on both Reddit and iFunny going into early 2022. For instance, on January 19th, 2022, the template was used in /r/dankmemes.^[9]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References