President of Botswana Holding Second-Largest Diamond

About

President of Botswana Holding Second-Largest Diamond is a reaction image and series of image macro memes based on a video of Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi, a Black man wearing a blue suit and red tie in the clip, holding the world's second-largest diamond with a shocked expression on his face. The video went viral in late August 2024 and became the subject of memes over the following days in which it is used alongside captions about coming to a surprising revelation or learning something shocking.

Origin

On August 22nd, 2024, a video of the President of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi, holding the second largest diamond on Earth went viral on social media. According to a report by BBC,^[1] the diamond comes in around 2,492 carats and was acquired from Karowe mine in Botswana by Lucara Diamond, a Canadian-owned firm. When the president is handed the diamond, he exclaims, "What!?" and makes a shocked face (shown below).^[2]

It is unclear who first used a screenshot of the video as a meme. The earliest known example was posted by X^[3] user @Anthony_Bonato on August 23rd, 2024, writing, "Me when I discover a new proof," garnering around 17 likes in four days (shown below).

Spread

The video gained viral spread over the following days, inspiring further memes. On August 24th, 2024, the video was posted to the subreddit /r/interestingasfuck,^[4] garnering over 106,000 upvotes in three days.

On the same day, X^[5] user @peterrhague posted an image of the President's reaction, writing, "Feel like the President of Botswana being shown a massive diamond has meme potential," garnering over 240 likes in three days.

Later that day, a now-deleted version of the meme was posted to /r/Overwatch,^[6] garnering over 2,000 upvotes in three days. An edit of the meme was posted to /r/ShitPostCrusaders^[7] in which the President holds Crazy Diamond from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in his hands, garnering over 750 upvotes in three days.

On August 26th, Redditor u/Subho1908 posted a meme to /r/memes^[8] using the image of the President with the diamond, captioning the meme, "when you at the age where you start hearing all the family secrets and realize all your family is lowkey horrible people and all hate each other," garnering over 61,000 upvotes in a day (shown below).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References