Stonks is a deliberately misspelled version of "stocks" attached to a surreal Meme Man image with the caption "STONKS," used as a reaction to bad financial decisions[2].

Where did Stonks come from?

The image was first posted on June 5th, 2017 by the Facebook page Special Meme Fresh [2], gaining over 3,600 likes and reactions[2].

What does Stonks mean?

It mocks the act of pretending you profited from a pointless or losing trade, like swapping 600 wheat for one emerald[6].

How do you use Stonks?

People drop the Meme Man "STONKS" image as a reaction whenever someone makes an obviously bad money move and acts like it was smart[6].

Is Stonks still popular?

Stonks spread heavily on Reddit through 2018 and 2019[1], and after the GameStop short squeeze it became shorthand in communities like r/WallStreetBets [7].

Stonks

2017reaction imageclassic

Stonks is a surreal reaction image showing the character Meme Man in front of a stock-market backdrop with the deliberately misspelled caption "STONKS." It started on Facebook in 2017 and spread across Reddit as a joke about making terrible financial decisions and pretending they were smart.

finance memes reaction memes misspelling memes surreal memes exploitable templates

Overview

Stonks is an intentional misspelling of the word "stocks," stuck onto a surreal image of the character Meme Man standing in front of a blurry stock-market graphic with the single caption "STONKS"2. It works as a reaction image, the kind people drop whenever someone makes an obviously bad financial move and plays it off as genius6.

The joke lives in the gap between confidence and competence. Meme Man looks proud, the arrow points up, but the "investment" is usually something dumb, like trading 600 wheat for a single emerald6. By the 2020s, "stonks" also got adopted inside Meme Stock communities to describe joke investing aimed at nudging a stock's price4.

How It Spread

Over the following months the image moved through meme subreddits. On July 3rd, 2017, it was reposted to r/Ooer , where it gained over 400 points. A YouTube clip of the word read back with heavy reverb followed in February 2018, and a March 2018 Imgur photo dump edit pulled over 131,000 views.

Reddit kept Stonks going through 2018 and 2019. On December 5th, 2018, Redditor x37 mashed it up with the "I'll Take Your Entire Stock" format on r/memes. On June 3rd, 2019, Redditor Renji posted a fake-text version to r/GoodFakeTexts that gained over 4,400 points, while a separate r/me_irl post cleared 13,000 points.

The format spun off other Meme Man jobs too, like Shef, Tehc and Helth. After the GameStop short squeeze, "stonks" turned into shorthand in trading communities like r/WallStreetBets for buying into struggling stocks to try to turn a profit.

How to Use This Meme

A typical Stonks edit keeps Meme Man and the rising arrow, then swaps the background to fit whatever bad decision is being celebrated. The caption is commonly just the word "STONKS." People often pair it with a setup describing a clearly unprofitable trade, then deliver "Stonks" as the punchline.

Memecoin & IP

On April 2nd, 2021, $STNK launched on Solana as the blockchain's first memecoin, directly inspired by the Stonks image. The project built a community around the original meme and later moved to acquire the actual intellectual property rights to it.

In November 2024, the original creator of the Stonks image sold the official NFT of the tokenized IP to the $STNK community through Know Your Meme's authentication process. KYM verified the sale to confirm the IP rights came from the actual creator and not an impersonator. The $STNK community appointed Cobie (https://x.com/cobie) as the onchain custodian of the tokenized IP and stated they wanted to "strengthen the memecoin's provenance" and pay tribute to the artist who made the meme.

The IP chain runs through multiple legally verified sales: the original creator sold the rights to Youtooz, Youtooz sold the tokenized rights to DankBank, and DankBank sold the tokenized rights to the $STNK community. Each transfer has legal paperwork verified between the organizations. $STNK holders now own the tokenized IP rights to the Stonks meme, making it one of the few memecoins with legitimate intellectual property backing its branding.

Frequently Asked Questions

References (8)

Stonks

2017reaction imageclassic

finance memes reaction memes misspelling memes surreal memes exploitable templates

Overview

Stonks is an intentional misspelling of the word "stocks," stuck onto a surreal image of the character Meme Man standing in front of a blurry stock-market graphic with the single caption "STONKS". It works as a reaction image, the kind people drop whenever someone makes an obviously bad financial move and plays it off as genius.

The joke lives in the gap between confidence and competence. Meme Man looks proud, the arrow points up, but the "investment" is usually something dumb, like trading 600 wheat for a single emerald. By the 2020s, "stonks" also got adopted inside Meme Stock communities to describe joke investing aimed at nudging a stock's price.