# Floating Filipino Government Officials > Floating Filipino Government Officials is a 2011 photoshop exploitable meme from a botched DPWH PR photo of three officials hovering in mid-air during a typhoon damage inspection. Floating Filipino Government Officials is a photoshop exploitable meme born from a botched government PR photo posted on September 28, 2011. The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in the Philippines uploaded a clumsily edited image of three officials supposedly inspecting typhoon damage along Roxas Boulevard in Manila, but the men appeared to be hovering in mid-air. The image was spotted almost immediately, pulled down within minutes, and spawned a wave of parody edits placing the trio into absurd settings around the world. ## Origin On September 27, 2011, Typhoon Nesat (known locally as Typhoon Pedring) struck the Philippine coast, killing over 31 people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage[3]. The next day, September 28, the DPWH Central Office posted a photo to its official Facebook page showing three officials at the disaster cleanup along Roxas Boulevard in Manila Bay[1]. The three men in the photo were DPWH Undersecretary Romeo Momo, DPWH National Capital Region Director Reynaldo Tagudando, and DPWH South Manila District Engineer Mikunug Macud[1]. According to DPWH public relations officer Andro Santiago, their images had been cropped from a separate photo taken at a different angle and composited onto a scene of the seawall wreckage. The composite was originally being prepared for an internal DPWH magazine layout and was posted to Facebook by mistake[1]. A civil engineer and Filipino blogger noticed the men appeared to be floating and pointed out the manipulation in a blog post[3]. The story spread through the Philippine blog network within hours. - **Platform:** DPWH official Facebook page (source photo), Filipino blogs and Facebook (viral spread) - **Creator:** DPWH staff photographer (original composite), unnamed civil engineer / Filipino blogger (discovery and viral spread) - **Date:** 2011 ## Overview The meme centers on a group photo of three Philippine government engineers wearing hard hats at what should have been a disaster inspection site. Instead of a genuine on-location shot, a DPWH staffer had crudely cut the three men from one photograph and pasted them onto a separate image of Roxas Boulevard's damaged seawall using what appeared to be Photoshop's lasso tool[3]. The result made the officials look like they were levitating above the flood debris. The obvious editing job turned a routine press release into an international laughingstock, and the cutout image of the three floating men became a reusable template that internet users dropped into every setting imaginable. ## How It Spread Once the blogger flagged the edit, critical comments flooded the DPWH Facebook page. People called out the department for faking documentation of their officials' work[1]. Beth Pilorin, chief of the DPWH Public Information Division, posted an apology the following day, explaining the image "was not cleared yet before the staff posted it" and had already been replaced with the genuine photo[1]. Santiago told Inquirer.net that the photo was live for roughly two minutes before it was pulled and swapped for the real press image, insisting the replacement was authentic and unedited[1]. But two minutes was more than enough. The story jumped from Filipino blogs to major Western outlets including the Washington Post, the UK's Telegraph, and the Philippine Inquirer[3]. It also hit social aggregators like Digg, bringing the meme to a global audience[3]. A Facebook user created a page called "DPWHere" to collect and share photoshop parodies, and it quickly filled with contributions from Filipino internet users who placed the floating trio into increasingly ridiculous contexts[3]. Other bloggers like FanboySEO ran their own photoshop challenges, superimposing the three officials into everything from South Park scenes to The Price Is Right[2]. One popular mashup combined the floating Filipino officials with a similar incident from June 2011, when Chinese government officials were caught in their own badly photoshopped inspection photo, creating a crossover parody of government photoshop failures[3]. The controversy reached the highest levels of Philippine government. On October 3, 2011, a spokesman for President Benigno Aquino announced that the "overeager employee" responsible for posting the unfinished composite had been suspended[3]. The meme also reached creative communities outside the Philippines. The Pothole Gardener, a UK-based street art blog, inserted the floating officials into one of their miniature pothole garden installations, noting the trio had "become an internet sensation" and been "photoshopped everywhere"[2]. ## How to Use The format is simple: grab the cutout image of the three hard-hat-wearing officials (widely available through the DPWHere Facebook page and image search) and paste them into any photo or scene. The humor comes from the men's casual inspection poses being placed somewhere completely inappropriate. Common approaches include: - Dropping them into famous movie scenes, TV shows, or paintings - Placing them at iconic landmarks or disaster sites from other countries - Combining them with other photoshop-fail memes (like the Chinese floating officials) - Inserting them into absurd everyday situations where three guys in hard hats don't belong The meme works best when the officials maintain their original scale and positioning relative to each other, preserving the awkward "floating" look that made the original so funny. ## Cultural Impact The Floating Filipino Government Officials meme hit a nerve because it exposed a specific kind of government dishonesty: officials pretending to be on-site during a disaster when they may not have been (or at least, when their PR team couldn't be bothered to use the real photos). The DPWH maintained the officials had actually visited the site and the edit was just a careless layout mistake[1], but the damage to public trust was done. International media coverage from the Washington Post and the Telegraph brought global attention to Philippine government transparency issues[3]. The meme also arrived during a period when similar government photoshop scandals were making news in other countries, most notably the Chinese floating officials incident just three months earlier[3]. Together, these incidents created a brief moment of worldwide awareness about how governments manipulate visual PR. The suspension of the responsible employee by order of President Aquino's office showed the meme had real political consequences[3]. ## Fun Facts - The original doctored photo was live on DPWH's Facebook for only about two minutes before being pulled, but that was enough for it to be screenshotted and go viral[1]. - DPWH PR officer Andro Santiago described the replacement photo in Tagalog: "Walang Photoshop at hindi naretoke" ("No Photoshop and not retouched")[1]. - The meme was part of a brief international wave of government photoshop fails in 2011, with Chinese officials getting caught in a nearly identical scandal months earlier[3]. - The responsible DPWH staffer was reportedly preparing the composite for an internal magazine, not for public release[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Floating Filipino Government Officials? It's a photoshop exploitable meme based on a poorly edited photo of three Philippine DPWH officials who appeared to be hovering over a typhoon-damaged area of Roxas Boulevard in Manila, posted to Facebook on September 28, 2011[1]. ### Where did Floating Filipino Government Officials come from? The DPWH Central Office posted the doctored image to their official Facebook page the day after Typhoon Nesat hit the Philippines. A civil engineer and blogger spotted the editing and exposed it online[3]. ### What does the Floating Filipino Government Officials meme mean? The meme satirizes government dishonesty and incompetent PR, specifically the practice of faking officials' presence at disaster sites. The exploitable format places the three floating men into absurd contexts for comedic effect[1]. ### How do you use the Floating Filipino Government Officials meme? Cut out the image of the three hard-hat-wearing officials and paste them into any photo or scene. The humor comes from their casual hovering poses being placed somewhere completely out of context[3]. ### Is Floating Filipino Government Officials still popular? The meme peaked in October 2011 and is no longer actively circulated. It's remembered as a notable example of government photoshop fails and Philippine internet culture[3]. ### Who were the officials in the photo? DPWH Undersecretary Romeo Momo, NCR Director Reynaldo Tagudando, and South Manila District Engineer Mikunug Macud, shown discussing typhoon damage along Roxas Boulevard[1]. ### Did the DPWH apologize for the photo? Yes. Beth Pilorin, chief of the DPWH Public Information Division, posted a public apology on Facebook the day after, saying the photo had not been cleared before posting[1]. ### Was anyone punished for the photoshop mistake? On October 3, 2011, President Benigno Aquino's spokesman announced the "overeager employee" who posted the image had been suspended[3]. ### Were the officials actually at the disaster site? The DPWH claimed the officials did visit the site and the composite was made from real photos taken at a different angle, prepared for an internal magazine layout[1]. ### How did Western media react? The story was covered by the Washington Post, the UK's Telegraph, and the Philippine Inquirer, and was featured on social media aggregator Digg[3]. ## References 1. [Photo of ‘floating’ DPWH officials causes uproar in cyberspace | Inquirer News]() 2. [Floating Filipino government officials in one of my gardens! — The Pothole Gardener]() 3. [Floating Filipino Government Officials - Know Your Meme]() 4. [$Trump]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/floating-filipino-government-officials Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library