Thanks Obama began as an ironic online catchphrase used to blame Barack Obama, in jest, for problems he had nothing to do with, from broken appliances to bad weather. It spread through social media posts, image macros and reaction videos in the 2010s, where the humour came from applying presidential blame to trivial everyday failures. Because the phrase is short, instantly recognisable and deliberately overblown, it survived long after its original political context faded and is now used mainly as a general joke about bad luck.