???? PROFIT!!!!

1998catchphraseclassic

Published September 23, 2026

The '???? PROFIT!!!!' format traces back to a 1998 South Park episode where a colony of underpants-stealing gnomes revealed a business plan that skipped its middle step entirely. Within a few years, the joke drifted from a cartoon gag into a template posters used to mock any strategy whose path from action to money was suspiciously vague, and it became one of the longest-running business-plan burns on the internet.

snowclone memessouth park memessilicon valley satire memescatchphrase memeslate 1990s memes

Overview

Every version of the joke follows the same skeleton. A short numbered list starts with a concrete action, ends with 'Profit!' or the shouted 'PROFIT!!!!', and swaps the middle step for one or more question marks1. Longer strings of question marks signal a bigger logical leap, so '1. Collect underpants 2. ??? 3. Profit' reads as a wider hole than one with a single '?'.

The template picked up two flavors over the years. One is the earnest business burn, favored by bloggers who used it to skewer dot-com and Web 2.0 era startups whose only real plan was 'get users' and hope revenue turned up later1. The other is playful trivia and fandom use, plugging real biographies or fictional villains into the same three-step shape3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Comedy Central / Ars Technica forums (viral spread)
Date
1998

The gag comes from the South Park episode 'Gnomes,' which Comedy Central aired on December 16, 19984. In the plot, tiny gnomes sneak into houses at night to steal underpants and insist the operation will be lucrative. Pressed for details, one gnome points to a chart reading 'Phase 1: Collect underpants. Phase 2: ?. Phase 3: Profit,' unable to explain what phase two actually is4.

The scene did not spawn an online template overnight. The earliest documented reference came almost six years later, when a user posting as Emkorial on the Ars Technica forums asked on April 21, 2004 where the '1., 2., 3.?, 4. PROFIT!!' joke had come from and admitted they already used it themselves for laughs3.

How It Spread

The template caught on with tech bloggers first. On April 10, 2006, ConversionRater published 'Web 2.0: Underpants Gnomes Business Models,' arguing that a fresh wave of internet startups were pitching plans that lined up perfectly with the gnomes' missing middle step1.

The format kept getting reused on new business targets. In December 2006, a blog called crackedrabbitgaming ran a 'GameStop's Business Strategy' post that ended 'raise the price, but don't remove the old stickers, so customers can see themselves getting screwed. Profit!'; four years later, Cracked plugged the fictional Weyland-Yutani corp from the Alien films into the same three-step frame3.

The joke also drifted into non-business use. The MIT Mystery Hunt in 2008 built an entire puzzle called 'These Ain't No Underpants Gnomes' out of sixteen impossible-looking career leaps such as '1. Play the harmonica in a band 2. ???? 3. Buy a castle,' asking solvers to identify the famous people whose real biographies filled the middle steps2. A Tennessee fan later revived the format on national TV, holding up a sign at a 2016 College GameDay broadcast that read '1. Half Time 2. ? 3. Miracle.'

How to Use This Meme

Pick something concrete for step one, type one or more question marks for the middle step, and finish with 'Profit!' The bigger the perceived leap between the starting action and the payoff, the more question marks the middle step typically gets. The format works whether the target is a real business plan, a sports strategy, or a fictional villain's scheme.

Frequently Asked Questions