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 memesreaction memesmisspelling memessurreal memesexploitable 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.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2017

The Stonks image first appeared on June 5th, 2017, when the Facebook page Special Meme Fresh 2 posted Meme Man standing in front of a stock-photo trading floor, captioned "STONKS." That original post pulled in more than 3,600 likes and reactions2. The deliberately wrong spelling and Meme Man's deadpan face were the entire joke, and that pairing became the template later edits copied.

How It Spread

Over the following months the image moved through meme subreddits. On July 3rd, 2017, it was reposted to r/Ooer 1, 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 views4.

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 3 that gained over 4,400 points, while a separate r/me_irl 5 post cleared 13,000 points.

The format spun off other Meme Man jobs too, like Shef, Tehc and Helth4. After the GameStop short squeeze, "stonks" turned into shorthand in trading communities like r/WallStreetBets 7 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 celebrated2. 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 punchline6.

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 process8. 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 meme8.

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

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 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.

Origin & Background

Platform
Facebook (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2017

The Stonks image first appeared on June 5th, 2017, when the Facebook page Special Meme Fresh 2 posted Meme Man standing in front of a stock-photo trading floor, captioned "STONKS." That original post pulled in more than 3,600 likes and reactions2. The deliberately wrong spelling and Meme Man's deadpan face were the entire joke, and that pairing became the template later edits copied.

How It Spread

Over the following months the image moved through meme subreddits. On July 3rd, 2017, it was reposted to r/Ooer 1, 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 views4.

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 3 that gained over 4,400 points, while a separate r/me_irl 5 post cleared 13,000 points.

The format spun off other Meme Man jobs too, like Shef, Tehc and Helth4. After the GameStop short squeeze, "stonks" turned into shorthand in trading communities like r/WallStreetBets 7 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 celebrated2. 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 punchline6.

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 process8. 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 meme8.

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