For Team Fortress 2 Bonk! meme, please refer to Bonk! (Team Fortess 2).

About

Bonk refers to a series of comic-style memes in which meme characters such as Doge and Cheems get hit on the head with bats, hammers and other heavy objects, accompanied by "Bonk" sound effect and clipart. The original image that spawned the meme depicts a Shiba Inu, named Copper, who ate a scorpion, causing the dog to be malformed due to the sting.

Origin

On March 24th, 2016, Tumblr^[12] user didlo posted a photo of their Shiba Inu with the caption, "She ate a scorpion," depicting their dog named Copper with a swollen head and face from the sting. The post (seen below) received over 20,300 likes in nine years.

Didlo later posted an update to their Tumblr,^[13] noting that Copper went to the vet after the incident, followed by more showing the dog had fully healed from the injury.^[14][15]

On July 13th, 2019, the Instagram^[1] page snootboopes posted a video based on two images of the dog, with the second image showing the dog humorously malformed with a hand holding a hammer edited in, accompanied by a "bonk" clip art and sound (shown below). The video received over 38,600 views and 5,000 likes in seven months.

The sound effect featured in the meme was used in episode 49b "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve" of season three of the SpongeBob SquarePants animated series^[2] and has been shared online as a part of royalty-free cartoon sound effect packs.^[3]

Spread

On July 20th, 2019, the influential meme compilation YouTube^[4] channel Freememeskids featured the video, with the compilation receiving over 4.2 million views in four months.

On July 21st and 22nd, snootboopes^[5][6] posted two more edits of the video, one showing the dog being hit with an anvil with a "Clank" sound and clipart, the second with the dog being hit with a newspaper accompanied by a "Thump" sound and clipart, and the last one showing the dog answering a phone call (shown below). The videos received over 17,800, 10,300 and 13,900 views in seven months.

On July 21st, 2019, Twitter^[7] user @omfuze tweeted the original meme, with the tweet receiving over 5,600 retweets and 20,500 likes and the video gaining over 2 million views on Twitter in four months. On the same day, Twitter user @ku1edud3 tweeted^[8] the "Thump" version of the meme, gaining over 700 retweets and 3,100 likes in the same period.

In the following months, the format gained a strong association with Ironic Doge Memes and gained notable spread online both in video and image format, with notable examples of the meme posted in /r/dogelore and /r/okbuddyretard subreddits, as well as on YouTube, Twitter, iFunny and Instagram (example shown below).^[9][10][11]

Bonk (Meme Coin)

Bonk, also known as $BONK, is a meme coin on the Solana blockchain that's named after the bonk meme. Bonk was introduced to the cryptocurrency market in December 2022 on Christmas and saw a significant spike in interest in December 2023, continuing to rise in value and prevalence online throughout 2024 alongside other meme coins.

Related Memes

Go to Horny Jail

Go to Horny Jail is a slang phrase associated with an image macro of a Doge hitting Cheems with a stick accompanied by Bonk! caption. The image and phrase have been used as a reaction to people being horny on main on social media.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References