Stahp

Stahp is a comic meme series, consisting of four segments, which typically shows several various illustrations or photographs depicting a disturbed-looking subject paired with captions based on a snowclone template.

The template firstly exclaims the subject of the meme in the first segment, then says ‘Wat R U Doin’ in the second. The third panel usually makes a reference to the subject again, and the fourth finally says stahp.

The word “stahp” stems from the initial misspelling and phonetic transcription of the word “stop”.

The first memes that featured the wrongly spelled word in a template featured an image of a contemptuous-looking pitbull dog saying ‘becca stahp’, originally uploaded on Tumblr.

After the original meme was uploaded on Tumblr by user jmiliam in 2012, it became a popular sensation and a few months later 9GAG featured it as a highlighted meme on the site.

Later, after the meme grew even more in popularity, people started to use the formula as a meme template on sites like Cheezeburger or Funnyjunk.

Eventually the meme surfaced on Reddit and YouTube as well, but eventually started to decline in popularity during the summer of 2012.

• Bustle.com – Where Does “Stahp” Come From?
• 7esl.com – Stahp