Oof Stones

About

Oof Stones, also known as Stones Saying "Oof,” is a reaction image depicting a collection of stones with small carved faces that look as if they’re saying “oof” with pursed lips. There are two commonly used photos of these stone carvings, but either can be used in the same fashion. Most often they’re used to simply react to a caption or image with “oof” but can also refer to another subject that relates to their facial expressions.

Origin

The two photographs used in the meme come from Silver Stone Handcrafted,^[1] an art studio located near Chicago. On April 4th, 2018, the artwork for “Wearable Sculpture~Sandblasted Stones” was added to the website with a total of 14 different combinations of the stone carving faces. Of these various groups, particularly Mixed Group #7 and #10 have been used as reaction images around the internet (some of which can be seen here).

According to the website, each one of the stone faces are unique and can be purchased individually. As of February 3rd, 2020, one of the most famous faces in the meme has already been purchased.

On December 8th, 2019, a post titled "Gotta go fast" was uploaded to 9GAG where it was initially used as a reaction image on the Funny page. This particular upload shows a video of an overly confident dog jumping down a flight of stairs and falling. User “deevodrift” commented on the post shortly after with the Mixed Group #10 image of the faces and received over 500 points (seen in the screenshot below). Another user then replied to the comment and asked where they could find more of them, to which several users posted additional examples.

Spread

Two days after the initial upload to 9GAG^[2], another video on the Funny page titled “Acting cool over a rail, what could go wrong” was also commented on with the same image by a different user. In this post, the video shows a man falling off the railing of an upper level and crashing to the ground. The stone carvings were once again the top comment in the thread with over 2,000 points, and several additional users posted different variations in the chain below. This is also the first time we see someone link the art studio that made the carvings, which likely contributed to their spread.

Users on 9GAG continued to use the image as a reaction to posts in the following weeks, until it eventually spread to Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit between January and February 2020.

On Twitter, Mateusz (@twujbog) tweeted an example of the photo being used elsewhere online with a caption above and the image below (seen here).

Chłopak: jest na tt i dodaje swoje zdjecie Połowa dziewczyn: pic.twitter.com/jNbsncJjkI

— Mateusz (@twujbog) January 31, 2020

One of the earliest examples of the photo being used in a more traditional meme format comes from this Tumblr^[3] account (Dank Today) that reposted a meme on February 1st.

Reddit rapidly adopted usage of the image into memes in early February as numerous examples were featured on the front page of the r/dankmemes and r/memes sub. The first post to this platform was made by u/nighthawk321 on February 1st to r/DankMemes (seen below). Receiving nearly 75,000 upvotes, this meme was one of the top posts to the subreddit that day.

Another can be seen from u/senor_pumpkin on February 2nd, who created a version depicting the stones as construction workers reacting to a girl walking down the street.^[4] This post went on to be upvoted over 26,000 times.

Over on r/MemeTemplatesOfficial, u/Stellar_Flower_1 can be seen posting the first instance of the template to Reddit^[5] on February 2nd, likely contributing to the creation of more memes in the following days.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References