It's Joever / We're Barack

About

It's Joever is a reaction image and catchphrase of United States President Joe Biden lowering his head as if in resignation, captioned, "It's Joever," a portmanteau of "Joe Biden" and the "It's Over" meme. In the following years, a similar catchphrase and image combo known as We're Barack, a portmanteau of Barack Obama and the "We're Back" meme, also emerged alongside it. In 2023, both the image and the phrases achieved virality as reactions online.

Origin

On October 14th, 2020, shortly before the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user posted a Joe Biden version of the It's Over reaction image, captioned, "IT'S JOEVER," in /pol/ (shown below).

The photograph of Biden lowering his head was taken on March 12th, 2019, during his speech at a conference in Washington D.C.^[6]

In the following months, the image was actively used on 4chan's /pol/^[2][3] in threads discussing the election (examples shown below, left and right).

Spread

The image did not achieve mainstream usage until September 2022, when it, alongside its alternative version captioned, "joewari da" (shown below, left), started gaining popularity on Twitter.^[4] For example, on September 18th, Twitter^[5] user @shamarke_a used the reaction image to comment on a news tweet about Joe Biden declaring the COVID-19 pandemic to be officially over. The reply (shown below, left) gained over 10 retweets and 330 likes (shown below, right).

The reaction gained more popularity in early 2023 through active use on Twitter.

We're Barack

In the spring and summer of 2023, users on Twitter started pairing the "It's Joever" image with an image of former President Barack Obama labeled "We're Barack." This was a punning reference to the It's So Over, We're So Back meme in which a declaration of it being "over" would be immediately followed by the declaration that "we're back."

A meme combining the two was posted on April 19th, 2023, on Twitter by user @sirDangel and watermarked (seen below, left).^[7] The meme was also posted at the same time to Reddit's /r/ r/shitposting and /r/okbuddyretard. It gained over 2,200 upvotes in the latter subreddit, but was removed after five hours due to it not fitting the theme of the subreddit.^[9]

A month later, user @SirDangel produced a template of just the Obama image with "We're Barack" after receiving requests to do so from followers (seen below, right).^[8] At the time, @sirDangel also clarified that the meme was not political and was a play on the "It's So Over / We're So Back" meme.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References