About

Stonks is an intentional misspelling of the word "stocks" which is often associated with a surreal meme featuring the character Meme Man standing in front of a picture representing the stock market followed by the caption "Stonks." The picture began seeing use as a reaction image online in jokes about making poor financial decisions. In the 2020s, the term "stonks" has come to be used within the Meme Stocks community to describe humorous investing in various companies as a means to manipulate the market.

Origin

On June 5th, 2017, Facebook page Special Meme Fresh^[1] posted the image of Meme Man in front of a stock photo representing the stock market, captioned "STONKS." The image gained over 3,600 likes and reactions (shown below).

Spread

Over the following months, the image saw some spread in jokes online. On July 3rd, 2017, the image was posted to /r/Ooer,^[2] where it gained over 400 points. On February 9th, 2018, YouTuber HallucinatoryMenu posted a clip of the word being read with heavy reverb, gaining over 19,000 views (shown below, left). On March 15th, an edit appeared in an Imgur photo dump posted by 1860000000001^[3] which gained over 131,000 views (shown below, right).

On December 5th, 2018, Redditor x37 posted an I'll Take Your Entire Stock meme to /r/memes with the character^[4] (shown below, left). On June 3rd, 2019, Redditor Renji posted a fake text meme to /r/GoodFakeTexts,^[5] gaining over 4,400 points (shown below, right). The image also appeared in /r/me_irl^[6] where it gained over 13,000 points. The website eBaum's World published a list of 32 Weird Stonks Memes On The Rise.^[7]

The popularity of "Stonks" went on to spawn multiple similar memes in 2019 featuring Meme Man and focusing on other professions. Examples include Shef, Tehc and Helth.

I Didn't Mean To Send That

I Didn't Mean To Send That is a phrase featured in a series of viral videos depicting a string of texts sent from one person to their significant other. The videos, shot from a first-person POV as if the viewer is the one texting, feature a person sending a series of apology texts to their partner before mistakenly sending an unrelated image, most often a Stonks meme.

On June 3rd, 2019, Redditor Renji posted a fake text meme on r/GoodFakeTexts, featuring the text string as described in the About section of this page (shown below). The "accidentally sent" image, in this case, is the Stonks meme. The post received over 5,000 upvotes in 15 months.

Use In Meme Stock Communities

The term "Stonks" is frequently used in Meme Stock communities such as /r/WallStreetBets, particularly as users invest in seemingly dying stocks such as Gamestop in order to turn a profit. Since the Gamestop Short Squeeze, similar Meme Stocks have been referred to as "Stonks."

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References