"You Could Stop at Five or Six Stores" — Close-up video still of a woman with short curly hair and oval glasses speaking against a gray studio backdrop

"You Could Stop at Five or Six Stores"

2010viral videoclassic

Published November 4, 2026

"You Could Stop at Five or Six Stores" is a scripted line delivered by a rotating cast of amateur actors at the Sarantos Studio of Acting in Oak Park, Illinois, which surfaced online in 2010 as a montage of awkward auditions. The clip spread through Reddit's r/cringe and BuzzFeed between 2013 and 2014, and by 2017 it inspired lip-sync parodies set to Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda."

cringe memes youtube viral delayed virality memes lip sync memes subreddit origin memes

Overview

The clip is an audition reel in which a parade of hopeful actors try, and mostly flub, a single commercial tagline about comparison shopping at retail stores3. Deliveries range from flat and confused to wildly overacted, with long pauses, strange gestures, and off-camera cues bleeding into frame, which is what turned a routine studio demo into cringe entertainment1.

Online reuse tends to focus on the awkwardness itself rather than the phrase's meaning. Side lines from the same session, including "Can I ask you kind of a weird question" and "I can't stand it when she touches me," became their own search terms on YouTube and Reddit3. The montage format also gave remixers raw material to cut against music, most visibly in a 2014 edit that syncs the actors' mouths to Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda"2.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Sarantos Studio of Acting
Date
2010

The audition took place at the Sarantos Studio of Acting in Oak Park, Illinois, which runs the ActingClassSarantos YouTube account used to showcase student demos3. On May 1st, 2010, YouTube user Architect posted the earliest known excerpt titled "The Billy Smith Post," which later passed 300,000 views3.

A longer compilation of the same session was uploaded on February 4th, 2014, by a YouTuber credited as Josh, under the title "you could stop and five or six stores"3. That version pulled in millions of views and became the one most people quote and link to when discussing the audition4.

How It Spread

Reddit's r/cringe was the first big engine for the clips. On March 19th, 2013, a user posted a playlist of Sarantos auditions to the subreddit, which gathered 76 upvotes and sent viewers back to the YouTube uploads3. On February 22nd, 2014, a second r/cringe thread about Josh's compilation collected more than 3,000 upvotes, pushing the audition in front of a much larger audience3.

BuzzFeed picked it up next. On August 3rd, 2013, staff writer Dave Stopera published a roundup asking readers which of the actors they would cast in the commercial, giving the clips mainstream-blog coverage3. The blog So Bad So Good also wrote about the video in March 2014, treating it as a mystery and asking readers to explain what the commercial was actually for1.

Remix culture followed. YouTuber Jack Stalter posted "my anaconda could stop at five or six stores," which cut the audition footage so the actors appear to perform the sample from Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda"2. That edit passed 200,000 views by June 2017, and secondary lines from the same session, like "I can't stand it when she touches me," became recognizable on their own3.

Timeline

2010-05-01

YouTuber Architect uploads "The Billy Smith Post," the earliest known excerpt from the Sarantos Studio audition[3].

2013-03-19

A playlist of Sarantos audition clips is posted to r/cringe and gains 76 upvotes[3].

2013-08-03

BuzzFeed writer Dave Stopera publishes a post asking readers to cast the commercial[3].

2014-02-04

YouTuber Josh uploads the extended montage titled "you could stop and five or six stores"[4].

2014-02-22

A second r/cringe thread about Josh's compilation collects over 3,000 upvotes[3].

2014-03-04

So Bad So Good publishes a post asking readers to explain the audition[1].

2017-06

Jack Stalter's "Anaconda" parody passes 200,000 views on YouTube[2].

How to Use This Meme

People typically quote the line verbatim, often with the misspelled "stop and five or six stores" phrasing from the 2014 upload title. Reaction posts pair screenshots of individual actors mid-delivery with captions about shopping, indecision, or bad takes. Remixers also cut the montage against songs so the actors appear to lip-sync, as the "Anaconda" parody did in 20142.

Frequently Asked Questions