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

Published March 10, 2026

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 a reaction image built around Meme Man, a bald 3D character in the surreal meme style, positioned in front of a generic stock photo showing rising and falling market lines1. The caption below reads 'STONKS' in bold white letters, an intentional misspelling of 'stocks' that gives the joke its punch. People post it to react to obviously bad trades, ironic wins, and any situation where someone claims profit from something that clearly loses money8.

The format sits in the surreal meme family alongside other Meme Man characters like Shef, Tehc and Helth, which follow the same visual template but focus on different professions3. By 2020 and 2021, Stonks picked up a second life inside the r/WallStreetBets crowd, where traders adopted the word for their positions in GameStop, AMC and other so-called meme stocks7.

Origin & Background

Platform

Facebook (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)

Date

2017

The Stonks image first appeared on June 5th, 2017, on the Facebook page Special Meme Fresh1, which posted Meme Man in front of the now-iconic stock chart backdrop. That original upload pulled over 3,600 likes and reactions on the page1. The image came out of the broader surreal meme scene, where Meme Man had already been a recurring figure in low-effort, deliberately absurd macros.

How It Spread

On July 3rd, 2017, the image landed on /r/Ooer2 and gathered over 400 points, one of its earlier jumps outside Facebook. Traction stayed slow through late 2017 before picking up sharply the following year. On February 9th, 2018, YouTuber HallucinatoryMenu uploaded a heavily reverbed audio clip of someone reading the word 'stonks' aloud, which pulled over 19,000 views3. About a month later, on March 15th, 2018, an edit surfaced in an Imgur photo dump from user 1860000000001 and racked up more than 131,000 views6.

Stonks spent late 2018 and 2019 spinning off variants. On December 5th, 2018, Redditor x37 combined the character with the 'I'll Take Your Entire Stock' template on /r/memes4. On June 3rd, 2019, Redditor Renji posted a fake text screenshot to /r/GoodFakeTexts where the punchline was accidentally sending the Stonks image to a partner mid-apology, earning over 4,400 points5. EbaumsWorld later published a roundup titled '32 Weird Stonks Memes On The Rise'7.

The meme stock boom in early 2021 gave Stonks a new home in trading circles. Users on r/WallStreetBets started dropping the word into posts about GameStop and other short-squeeze targets, and the label 'meme stocks' itself became partly linked to the Stonks aesthetic7.

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.

How to Use This Meme

The classic version is a straight image reaction: someone posts Meme Man with the stock chart and 'STONKS' caption in response to a bad or ironic financial decision. Common variations include swapping the caption to 'NOT STONKS' with a downward chart, using the image as an accidentally-sent text punchline5, or applying the format to any situation where a nonsensical action produces a supposed win4. In trading contexts on r/WallStreetBets, people often drop the word 'stonks' alone as commentary on positions without needing the image at all7.