"DYKTMM" Is the Latest Acronym Confusing People All Across the Internet

If you've ever worked in a corporate environment, you're likely aware that there are acronyms flying all over the place in many offices. As it turns out, being online all the time is like working in an office, at least in that regard. Every day, it seems like there's a new acronym that exists in part to confuse all the people who don't know what it means.

Early May 2025 has brought us DYKTMM, an acronym that vaguely resembles a word, but in fact stands for something else. Here's what we know about the acronym and what it stands for:

DYKTMM is an acronym that stands for, of all things, "Do you know the muffin man?" Although that's obviously a popular nursery rhyme, DYKTMM became popular after a user posted an image from the movie Shrek online. In the movie, the Gingerbread Man is being tortured by Lord Farquad for information about the other fairytale creatures and is asked if he knows the muffin man.

The scene was captioned "It’s always 'wyd' never 'dyktmm,'" by user @peytonstearns06, who first posted the joke in 2021. In the years since, the acronym has continued to spread around the internet, in part because most people don't understand what's happening. For a generation of young adults now living their lives online, though, Shrek is a seminal text, and this is a way to reference it that feels covert.

Of course, there aren't actually that many real-world scenario where you need to ask someone if they know who the muffin man is. As a result, it's become more of a meme than a practical, day-to-day acronym, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been somewhat effective anyway. Above all else, it's a joke for those who already understand what's being discussed. For everyone else, it's easy enough to ignore.

DYKTMM is up there with the strangest or most niche acronyms to ever dominate the internet, but it's far from the first. TikTok, in particular, has led to the widespread adoption of various acronyms that seem to exist at least in part so that other people won't totally understand what's going on. Some of these acronyms are actually practical, but others fall more into the meme bucket that DYKTMM is also a part of.

You can spend all day trying to figure out what people are talking about online, and for some people, that might be fulfilling. For others, though, the better course might just be to ignore acronyms you don't understand under the assumption that, if something is genuinely important, people will communicate about it in a way that's easier to understand.

Being on the internet these days is a little bit like speaking most of a foreign language. You might not understand every single reference, but what's most important is that you get the gist of what's being discussed. DYKTMM is funny to some people, but you're not obligated to care about it.