Stonks
Where it came from
The Facebook page Special Meme Fresh posted the first Stonks image on June 5, 2017: Meme Man in front of a stock market graphic, captioned "STONKS." It spread through surreal meme subreddits like r/Ooer and later became the unofficial mascot of r/WallStreetBets.
A smooth, bald, badly rendered 3D head in a suit stares off to the side. Behind him, a glowing stock chart climbs upward. Underneath, one word: STONKS. That's Meme Man, a regular from the surreal meme scene, and he has never once understood the economy. The misspelling is the point. Nobody who types "stonks" is about to give you sound financial advice.
You use it for any galaxy-brained money move. Buying a $40 game on sale for $35 and calling it a $5 profit? Stonks. Selling your car to buy a scratch card? Stonks. There's a whole family of spin-offs too, like "not stonks" with the arrow pointing down, and "stinks" when something is just bad. The joke is always that the confidence is enormous and the reasoning is nonexistent.
Then in early 2021 the GameStop short squeeze happened and r/WallStreetBets turned Meme Man into a lifestyle. Suddenly people were putting real rent money behind a meme and posting "stonks only go up" unironically. It's calmed down since, but any time a stock does something stupid, someone posts the guy in the suit.
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Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
