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.
Origin
On June 16th, 2020, iFunny user Nuke posted the earliest available version of the meme, featuring an image of William Fisk from the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with the subtitle “Business Is Booming.” They captioned the image, “Tampon companies after inventing women to sell more tampons.” The post received more than 57,000 reactions and 895 comments in less than four months (shown below).
Precursor
Prior to the meme, people made similar jokes online. For example, on August 30th, 2018, Mastadon 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 August 3rd, 2020, iFunny user heroin shared a variation of the meme with the caption, “Bathroom companies after inventing genders to sell more bathrooms” (shown below, left).
In September 2020, the meme spread throughout the internet. On September 26th, Redditor sajtlovas posted a video in the /xqcow, 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 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).
Various Examples
Search Interest
Know Your Meme Store
External References
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/companies-after-inventing