# Stonks
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.
## 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 genius[6].
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[6]. By the 2020s, "stonks" also got adopted inside Meme Stock communities to describe joke investing aimed at nudging a stock's price[4].
## 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 views[4].
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 Helth[4]. 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
A typical Stonks edit keeps Meme Man and the rising arrow, then swaps the background to fit whatever bad decision is being celebrated[2]. 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[6].
## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Stonks?
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].
## References
1. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Ooer/]()
2. [https://www.facebook.com/SpecialMemeFresh/]()
3. [https://www.reddit.com/r/GoodFakeTexts/]()
4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/stonks]()
5. [https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/]()
6. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Stonks]()
7. [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/]()
8. [https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/meme-review/stonks-creator-sells-official-stonks-nft-to-the-community-behind-meme-coin-based-on-the-iconic-image]()
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Source: https://meme.com/memes/stonks
Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library