Jim Cramer ‘Have Fun Being Poor’ Tweet

On January 25 2022, screenshots of a purported tweet by CNBC’s Jim Cramer circulated on stock trading subreddits — in which he was quoted as saying “Have fun being poor”:

There was no further context.

On Reddit, we located five separate iterations of the Cramer “Have fun being poor” tweet, all published on January 25 2022. Two of the Reddit posts featured the image above, and three featured the image in a broader composition or altered format:

Notably, all five of the posts involved the same exact “screenshot” of a tweet. It included a “TweetDeck” link, and the following time, date, and metrics:

9:27 AM • 1/24/22

55 Retweets | 36 Quote Tweets | 569 Likes

The confrontational tone and content of the tweet were such that screenshots would likely have been taken by many different people in the event it was deleted. Typically, offensive or questionable tweets are evidenced by myriad screenshots, with variations in both timestamps (across time zones) and engagement counts — every screenshot had the same 55, 36, and 569 figures at the bottom.

A search of archive.is did not indicate the tweet had been archived, which again is common practice when a potentially offensive or volatile tweet is shared by a public figure. Conversely, sometimes social media posts are deleted quickly, before anyone can archive it.

We did a Google search for “@jimcramer ‘Have fun being poor,'” and only five results were returned. None of those results were links to cached or archived copies of the purported tweet.

Three of the results were tweets from other users including the phrasing in their own tweets. One was a 2021 (not 2022) TrendsMap capture of a separate user telling Cramer to “have fun staying poor.”

A Twitter search via the “Latest” tab (versus “Top”) again returned a small handful of results, six of which were from after the tweet was allegedly shared by Cramer. One of the six included the well-traveled purported screenshot, and accused Cramer of deleting the tweet:

In addition to the absence of any trace of the tweet, many people commenting on active threads often seemed to consider it satirical. A subthread on a stock-trading subreddit included the following exchange about the post’s labeling (“flair”):

“Is this legit? Couldn’t find on tweeter”

“I don’t think it is, probably why it’s flaired shitpost.”

“Way too many comments look like they think it’s real[.]”

“Yea nice nice. Initially I completely missed the flair which is very definitely a dead give away.”

In the exchange, the third comment alluded to people believing that the screenshot was real and that Cramer had really tweeted it. That claim was not implausible, as Cramer regularly taunted fans of the $GME and $AME tickers; the following four tweets were all published on January 25 2022:

On January 25 2022, a purported “Have fun being poor” tweet attributed to CNBC’s Jim Cramer circulated on Reddit and Twitter. Across five iterations, the same and likely fabricated screenshot was appended. Cramer regularly engaged in social media debate with $GME and $AMC stockholders, but the “Have fun being poor” tweet appeared to be a parody tweet later mistaken for a real tweet that was subsequently deleted.