The deliberate misspelling captioning the Meme Man stock-market reaction image is “Stonks.”
“Stonks” replaces the ordinary word “stocks” with a humorous spelling. The classic image combines Meme Man—a smooth, bald, blue-eyed 3D-rendered head—with a stock photograph of a suited man standing before an upward-trending chart. The joke usually signals exaggerated or irrational confidence about making money.
Artist Special meme fresh uploaded the well-known image on June 5, 2017. Meme Man had already been appearing as a recurring character in surreal memes since around 2014, but the “Stonks” image became especially widespread as a reaction picture on Reddit and Twitter.
The term later acquired fresh momentum during the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, when users on WallStreetBets used Meme Man as a symbol of speculative trading. Elon Musk also helped popularize related wording with his January 2021 “Gamestonk!!” post. “Stonks” does not describe a particular financial product or official market term; it is intentionally incorrect internet slang used for comic effect.