Stonks

2017

Date: 2017, peak 2020-2021 · Place: Special Meme Fresh Facebook group, then global · Figures: Anonymous German shitposter, originator · Meme Man, glossy 3D head template · Tags: Wojak Family, Finance Meme, Meme Man 01. Up And To The Right Stonks debuts in a June 2017 Facebook post on the German group Special Meme Fresh, an image of the round 3D Meme Man head in a suit, behind him an orange arrow climbing through a Bloomberg-style ticker. The misspelling is the whole joke. Stonks is what a man who has never read a 10-K thinks the word is. By 2020 it is the universal caption for any chart that goes up for any reason. By 2021 it is also the caption for charts that go down, ironically, which is when not stonks becomes its own template. 02. The Vocabulary Of The Bubble Stonks is the linguistic seed of every Era VII trader meme that follows. It teaches the internet that financial vocabulary, when slightly misspelled, becomes a tool for treating money as theater. Diamond hands, tendies, NgU, all of them inherit from the deliberately stupid k. When GameStop happens in January 2021 the Stonks man is already waiting. He is the patron saint of r/wallstreetbets before WSB knows it needs one. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Stonks' • Special Meme Fresh Facebook group, original post June 2017 • The Verge, 'How the Stonks meme explains 2020' (December 2020)