Companies After Inventing

Submission 8,180

About

Companies After Inventing is a phrasal template used in absurd jokes about conspiratorial businesses enjoying the success of natural occurrences and abstract ideas, which the meme treats as the business' product. The business are represented via joyful reaction images, particularly via Business Is Boomin' macro.

Origin

On June 16th, 2020, Redditor^[6] camdensparks posted the earliest available version of the meme, featuring an image of Kingpin from the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with the subtitle "Business Is Booming." The image, captioned "Tampon companies after inventing women to sell more tampons," received over 18,700 upvotes in four months (shown below). The post also spawned the Business Is Boomin' meme that gained association with the format in the following months.

Precursor

Prior to the meme, people made similar jokes online. For example, on August 30th, 2018, Mastadon ^[3] user @picklemaddierix posted, "gender is a scam invented by bathroom companies in the 1960's in order to sell more bathrooms." The post received more than 1,000 favorites and 930 shares in less than three years (shown below).

Spread

On June 16th, iFunny ^[1] user Nuke reposted camdensparks' meme, with the post gaining more than 57,000 smiles in four months.

On August 3rd, 2020, iFunny^[4] user heroin shared a variation of the meme with the caption, "Bathroom companies after inventing genders to sell more bathrooms" (shown below, left). On August 13th, Redditor^[7] CommitNooseLamp reposted the meme, with the post gaining over 13,500 upvotes in /r/memes.

In September 2020, the meme spread throughout the internet. On September 23rd and 24th, Redditors^[8]^[9] Slage4 and Suschbach posted memes that received over 15,400 upvotes and 22,000 upvotes in /r/dankmemes, respectively. On September 26th, Redditor sajtlovas posted a video in the /xqcow,^[2] a subreddit about the Twitch streamer xQc, of Vince McMahon enjoying money and that caption "The Coca-Cola company after inventing xqc." the post received more than 3,700 points (100% upvoted) in less than one week (shown below, center).

On September 26th, Instagram ^[5] user @grapejuiceboys shared a variation that reads, "Toilet paper companies after inventing poop." The post received more than 54,000 reactions in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).