Story: Well it all started rather harmless. A friend, A, introduced us to an instructional video on the different possible obamium shapes. From there we got deeper into the lore, engrossing ourselves into online communities such as Reddit to find like minded believers. I even went so far as to create my own media, using vfx to bring obamaprism to life in Los Angeles. A created a shrine in his living room one day consisting of a table with a candle in each of the corners and a triangle create by laying out approximately 8 paper obamaprisms out and a large image of Obamamium printed in a piece of paper hung over the shrine. We would play the sacralicious music and pray to our shrine. It’s all mostly still available on YouTube but I’ve since moved to worshipping the geico gecko.

Context: I was told this story over text, as the informant has COVID and was unable to meet in person, and also did not want to call or FaceTime. A little bit about this particular informant – while I knew these were great examples of folklore, which is why I included them, I do not believe they took the topic seriously. As a result, they told the stories in a very theatrical way, which might not be a terrible thing in the context of folklore, however it may make it hard to understand.

Thoughts: When asked about why this stuck in his head, the informant says that it was the best times he had goofing around with the friend group. His friend, A, ended up leaving after the semester that this happened, and he hasn’t seen him since.

Analysis: My interpretation of the story is that these friends got comically into the Obamamium meme, which was a meme that started on Reddit and ended up showing up on many other platforms. It was basically just a picture of Obama’s face on a pyramid and people called it Obamamium. I am also into memes, and hearing the story made me much more fascinated by meme folklore and how things escalate in folk groups.