Meaning
What does Stonks mean?
Stonks is the misspelled version of the word βstocksβ associated with our best guy, Meme Man standing in front of a stock market chart, with the magic word next to his majestic being.
The meme was created and had spread as the reaction image, accompanying the jokes about questionable financial decisions.
Origin
What's the origin of Stonks?
The first instance of the meme was posted in 2017, on the Facebook site called Special Meme Fresh.
The image gained great popularity and started to being used as a meme format.
Fun fact: in the British World War two military slang, stonk was an expression for a massive artillery bombardment on an enemy position β as we may read in a 2003 Urban Dictionary entry on Stonk.
Spread & Usage
How did Stonks spread?
In the period, following its posting, the picture was featured in several memes and jokes, reaching on its journey several subreddits, such as /r/Ooer and /r/memes.
Stonks got its own YouTube video as well, uploaded by the user HallucinatoryMenu.
It had spread onto several sites, becoming a well-known meme, being recognized on sites from 4chan, to Reddit, to Imgur.
Many jokes were also posted and are being posted up to this day onto Instagram meme pages as well as Facebook meme groups.

External resources
- Know Your Meme β Stonks
- Mel Magazin β The ‘Stonks’ Meme is actually a perfect distillation of boglehead investing
- Urban Dictionary β Stonks