About

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson Rhymes refers to a joke in which people make puns on the name of professional wrestler and actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson so that his nickname is something that rhymes with "The Rock" (i.e. "The Lock" or "The Stock"). The trend took off on Reddit's /r/me_irl subreddit in mid-June, 2017.

Origin

The trend took off on me_irl following a post by Lithium1024^[3] on June 11th, 2017 that also used "the wok" pun, gaining over 1,700 points (shown below).

Precursor

Prior to me_irl's popularization of the meme, puns on Johnson's name had appeared online in various forms. For example, on April 23rd, 2014, a visual "Dwayne 'Brock' Johnson" pun was uploaded to 9GAG, where it gained over 21,000 points (shown below, left).^[1] On July 31st, 2015, Instagram user _theblessedone^[2] uploaded an image of an Asian man who looked like Johnson, dubbing him "The Wok" (shown below, right).

Spread

Over the following two days, dozens of variations were uploaded to me_irl. Some of the most popular versions include "Dwayne 'The Lock' Johnson"^[4] with over 1,000 points (shown below, left) and "Dwayne 'The Spock' Johnson"^[5] with over 1,500 points (shown below, right).

Meanwhile, several threads about the trend were posted to /r/MemeEconomy. Some of the most popular include "Dwayne 'The Stock' Johnson"^[6] (shown below, left) and "Dwayne 'The Sock' Johnson"^[7] (shown below, right). The popularity of the memes was covered by The Daily Dot.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References