The Juxtaposition of WAGMI Culture
While the crypto community popularized WAGMI, it wasn't born there.
Instead, WAGMI emerged from the online movement that is Aziz Shavershian, more commonly known as Zyzz.
The Australian bodybuilder would commonly post videos online, encouraging young men to increase their physical health in crude Australian fashion.
As time went on, he became a figurehead for young, disenchanted men.
Terminally addicted gamers and socially anxious nerds who didn't play sports and had no girls and no muscles found hope in his videos.
But how did Zyzz's message of WAGMI become the most commonly used catchphrase in crypto?
The gaming and Reddit/4Chan community, where WAGMI culture initially spread, share similarities with the crypto community.
Both are highly attractive to introverted nerds, and in the early crypto days, these communities made a natural migration to crypto. A lot of this migration had to do with meme culture.
On a surface level, memes are shrugged off as nothing but light humor.
But, on a deeper level, memes are a form of communication that transcend culture and communities. There’s a real paper that’s been written on this topic.
Subconsciously, humor and memes resonate with us universally because they’re inherently true:
When memes are used as jabs at the most intense points of arguments, they function simultaneously as signifiers of superior authoritative status and as reminders of common affinity. Thus, the dualities underpinning memes’ structure lead to their performance as contested cultural capital.
As a community, Crypto Twitter is a cesspool of terminally addicted and depressed Twitter shit-posters hiding behind pseudonyms and constantly tweeting ambiguous quips.
You can compare this ambiguity in how the crypto community conducts itself to people's desire for exclusivity. In this sense, how the community discusses and approaches WAGMI might sound positive to an outsider.
Still, once you dive deeper, the ironic message of self-improvement is juxtaposed with the reality of individuals in the crypto community at large.
Crypto Twitter has taken what was a positive message into an ironic meme that's used as an excuse.
Crypto is notorious for traders losing money. The idea that "we're all going to make it" can often encourage irresponsible behavior.
Trading is an incredibly nuanced and complex endeavor, and trying to trade your way out of unhappiness is a destructive cycle.
Further, there's an argument that WAGMI can also express false "hopium," where you're still going to make it regardless of your terrible financial decisions.
As a community dominated by young men with no shortage of money and time, messages like this can be deployed to boost confidence. We're left with more financial ruin than success when the froth calms down.
It's ironic in this context where WAGMI could be seen as a mere advertisement that the community is striving further from the bounds of "making it."
But equally, I can also attest that WAGMI culture has done a genuine amount of good for this generation of internet natives.
So, to avoid being the middle IQ guy, I recognize there's a difference in how WAGMI is applied.
When Zyzz said we're all going to make it, he meant it, and the audience listening needed to hear it.
Working hard to improve yourself, your relationships, and your health is not only an essential transition of maturity but a message that isn't taught enough in the age of toxic masculinity.
But when Crypto Twitter unironically promotes WAGMI, it's nothing but a perpetual cycle to attract naive, dumb money and mask other problems they may have.
While WAGMI has pulled people in the crypto community together, the subconscious attitudes it's created have had equally insidious impacts.