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This community is sticking together.
“Stick Nation” is a bizarre movement that’s exploded on social media, with millions of people expressing their admiration for… pieces of wood.
On Instagram, @officialstickreviews has nearly 3 million followers, and on TikTok — or “StickTok” as it’s now known — the same account has garnered 782,300 fans and a staggering 12.5 million likes.
The accounts were started by pals Boone Hogg and Logan Jugler after they found a worn-down stick on the side of a Utah trail in 2023.
The duo thought it would be amusing to create an account dedicated to reviewing sticks, saying the one they found had “some excellent grain on it” and a “nice grip.”
In the time since, “Stick Nation” has become a sensation.
Last April, Hogg and Jugler were profiled in The New York Times, rapidly expanding their reach.
This month alone, celebs such as Lin Manuel-Miranda and Dermot Mulroney have both submitted their own sticks for review on the accounts.
Now, the “Stickhead” community even has its own language.
“Modded” sticks have been carved or modified in some way by human hands, while “natty” sticks are all natural.
Stickheads love to have fun with puns, too. One review shows a man and his daughter on the banks of Loch Ness in Scotland where they found a stick they dubbed the “Log Ness Monster.”
While A-listers have joined the craze, most of the reviews are posted by regular people with very irregular sticks. There are ones that resemble snakes, wizard staffs, wands, canes and even hands.
One person submitted their moss-covered stick that he found in Latvia, saying: “It’s useful to fight your enemies, because it’s quite light and sturdy.”
Meanwhile, a woman showed off what she called her “snake stick” — a curved piece of wood resembling a reptile.
“It works for the sneaking and for the gremlins,” she said.
Hogg told NPR that one of his favorite sticks he’s seen was one that was passed down from a grandfather to his grandson, embedded with patches and medals from the grandfather’s previous trails and hikes.
“I love the ones that have a story, but also some sort of kind of sentimental value to them,” he shared.
Hogg and Jugler recently hosted a “Stick of the Year” competition where an “Ancient Energy Sword” won the top prize.
They’re also branching offline with “Stick Quests,” where people will go off on a real-life search for sticks, as well as a “Travel Log” which would allow different members of the community to pass sticks along to one another.
“We really want to turn the page and the community into kind of getting them off their phones and into nature and interacting with each other and connecting,” Hogg said. “So that’s a big goal for us this year.”
