Meme Man, sometimes also referred to as Mr. Succ or the Stonks guy, is a character often featured in
internet meme
An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...
s. He is depicted as a
3D render of a smooth, bald, and often disembodied blue-eyed male head. He was popularized in the mid-2010s by the artist "Special meme fresh", and became a common character in many
surreal memes, a genre of internet humor inspired by
surrealism
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...
.
During the 2021
GameStop short squeeze
In January 2021, a short squeeze of the stock of the American video game retailer GameStop and other Security (finance), securities took place, causing major financial consequences for certain hedge funds and large losses for Short (finance), ...
, Meme Man was popularized by users of the
subreddit
Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...
r/wallstreetbets
r/wallstreetbets, also known as WallStreetBets or WSB, is a subreddit where participants discuss stock and option trading. It has become notable for its colorful jargon, aggressive trading strategies, stories of extreme gains and losses acquire ...
as the face of the "stonks" meme.
The first usage of him as a recurring character was on the Facebook page of the artist "Special meme fresh" starting in 2014, and soon spread to become "one of the only consistent stylistic elements" of the surreal memes aesthetic.
On June 5, 2017, the artist uploaded an image of Meme Man overlaid on top of a stock photo of a man in a business suit with arms crossed and a chart pointing upwards behind him, and the caption "Stonks", a deliberate misspelling of the word "stocks". The meme went viral and became a common reaction image on Reddit and
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
.
On February 1, 2019,
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...
bought the domain name "stankmemes.com" according to his tweet. In June 2020, when Tesla Inc. shares soared he tweeted "stonks" and the website featured this meme.
On August 27, 2020, a tweet comparing Meme Man to
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
founder
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...
went viral, accumulating over 400,000 likes as of July 30, 2021.
Elon Musk has used both Meme Man and the "stonks" meme as a reaction on Twitter,
and on January 26, 2021, he tweeted the word "Gamestonk!!" with an attached link to
r/wallstreetbets
r/wallstreetbets, also known as WallStreetBets or WSB, is a subreddit where participants discuss stock and option trading. It has become notable for its colorful jargon, aggressive trading strategies, stories of extreme gains and losses acquire ...
. Immediately afterwards, shares in
GameStop
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer, headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas). The brand is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operated 3,203 stor ...
rose 157 percent in
extended-hours trading
Extended-hours trading (or electronic trading hours, ETH) is stock trading that happens either before or after the trading day regular trading hours (RTH) of a stock exchange, i.e., pre-market trading or after-hours trading.
After-hours tradin ...
, which some linked with Musk's tweet.
In 2021, the multiplayer video game ''
Fortnite
''Fortnite'' is an online video game and game platform developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in seven distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: '' Fortnite Battle Roy ...
'' released a "Diamond Hanz"
skin
Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation.
Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different ...
, based on the design of Meme Man, as a joke for April Fools Day.
See also
*
Rage comic
A rage comic is a short cartoon strip using a growing set of pre-made cartoon faces, or rage faces, which usually express rage or some other simple emotion or activity. They are usually crudely drawn in Microsoft Paint or other simple drawing pr ...
– A meme which uses copies of black-and-white
Microsoft Paint
Microsoft Paint (commonly known as MS Paint or simply Paint) is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens, modifies and saves image files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GI ...
illustrations to illustrate emotional states
*
Vaporwave
Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, a visual art style, and an Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s and became well-known in 2015. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, 1970 ...
– A
microgenre
microgenre is a specialized or niche genre. The term has been used since at least the 1970s to describe highly specific subgenres of music, literature, film, and art. In music, examples include the myriad sub-subgenres of heavy metal and electro ...
of
electronic music
Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...
, and visual art style characterized by a
nostalgic
Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word ''nostalgia'' is a neoclassical compound derived from Greek, consisting of (''nóstos''), a Homeric word meaning "homecomi ...
or surrealist engagement with the
popular entertainment
Popular culture (also called pop culture or mass culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as popular art pop_art.html" ;"title="f. pop art">f. pop artor mass art, somet ...
, technology and
advertising
Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...
of previous decades
*
List of Internet phenomena
Internet phenomena are social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet, such as Internet memes, which include popular catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly ...
– List which covers many popular internet memes
References
{{reflist
Internet memes introduced in 2014
Surreal comedy
Surrealist works
Heads in the arts
Internet characters introduced in 2014
Internet meme characters