Joe Biden's Birthday Candles

About

Joe Biden's Birthday Candles refers to a photograph of President Joe Biden celebrating his 81st birthday in November 2023 in front of a birthday cake lit with blazing candles. The intensity of the candles' flames in the photograph led to jokes and comparisons to the This Is Fine meme after it became a captioned reaction image online over the following days.

Origin

On November 20th, 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden posted a celebratory birthday post on his Instagram account.^[1] In the post, he joked, "Turns out on your 146th birthday, you run out of space for candles!" The post gained over 1 million likes in one day (shown below).

Spread

After the picture was posted, several users on social media commented on the bizarre intensity of the flames on the candles, joking that they represented the current state of America. On November 20th, 2023, the same day the picture was posted, Twitter / X user @Kylenabecker^[2] joked that the cake represented America, gaining over 2,400 retweets and 20,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). The same day, user @politblogme^[3] posted a similar sentiment, gaining 10 retweets and 45 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Others compared the photo to the This Is Fine meme. For example, on November 20th, Twitter user @LeighGiangreco^[4] made the comparison in a post, gaining over 200 likes in one day (shown below, left). User @bad_takes^[5] also made a comparison to an older meme, this time a picture of Donald Trump with a "taco bowl," gaining over 1,300 retweets and 16,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References