WAGMI / NGMI

About

WAGMI / NGMI, also known as We're All Gonna Make It or Not Gonna Make It, is a catchphrase from 4chan's fitness board /fit/ that was popularized by the icon and bodybuilder Zyzz. Since its inception, it's been used in 4chan and adjacent communities to show comradery and a willingness to keep going in life. Around 2020, WAGMI began to see use inside crypto and meme stock communities as a way to show unification, with the opposite phrase, NGMI, finding use when dips occur.

Origin

During one of his motivational videos, Zyzz is quoted as saying that there's no hate for yourself for not looking like him or listening to haters because "we're all going to make it." This became a catchphrase within the online bodybuilding community, which would say the phrase to each other as a form of coping with struggles in real life. A video of his motivational speech where he says the iconic line was uploaded to YouTube^[1] on March 24th, 2012, by the YouTuber Jamie Tree, where it gained 1.7 million views in nine years (shown below).

Following his death in 2011, a webcomic was made where Zyzz says the motivational line again. A video retelling of the webcomic, complete with sad music, was uploaded to the YouTube^[2] channel SuustSuhu on November 30th, 2012, where it gained 532,000 views in nine years (shown below).

Spread

Despite his death in 2011, Zyzz and his catchphrase continued to spread online, with the phrase being repeated often in forums and threads whether he was directly mentioned or not. Even a decade later, such as a post on July 31st, 2021, greentext stories using the phrase continued to circulate on 4chan and Reddit^[3] (example shown below).

Zyzz and his catchphrase became so prevalent in the early 2020s that Amazon listings had notebooks featuring his silhouette and phrase on sale beginning in March 2020 (shown below).^[4]

Use In Meme Stocks / Cryptocurrency Communities

A side-community to /fit/ on 4chan, /biz/, the business board of the site, also adopted the use of the catchphrases in 2021, similar to WallStreetBets that has overlap within the two communities (notably when it came to the WallStreetBets Gamestop Squeeze in which 4chan /biz/ threads were being posted on WallStreetBets often). Due to the nature of stocks, particularly meme stocks, they are seen as a collaborative effort to help the greater community with personalized theories on maximum efficiency, leading to the presence and lingo from /fit/ bleeding over, including WAGMI and NGMI. This is most prevalent in greentext stories that talk about earning crypto, having it go well or sometimes not well at all but finding a sense of purpose, such as in the post on /r/Greentextstories^[5] by the Redditor dewd546 on July 11th, 2021, which received over 900 upvotes in four months (shown below).

Similarly, NGMI (Not Gonna Make It) refers to when a trader doesn't have Diamond Hands and is thinking of selling because of a dip or to lock in profits without waiting for them to get bigger. It is also used as a noun when referring to shitcoins that will never make it. An example of an NGMI meme using it as a noun to signify a shitcoin was uploaded to the /r/NGMI^[6] subreddit by Redditor cottonkittyx on May 18th, 2021, showing a McDonald's worker who has a large bag of a crypto that will never take off (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References