When the Brands Came for Crypto: Can a Subculture Survive the Social Media Managers?
Giant corporations are suddenly tweeting “WAGMI” and putting .eth on their social handles. For some in the crypto community, it's “the most cringeworthy thing they’ve seen.”
Within the dark caverns and crevices of Twitter, there is a singular sunny corner: the lair of the non-fungible token influencer. Their tweets are littered with optimistic acronyms: LFG for “let’s fucking go.” WAGMI for “we’re all going to make it.” GM to bid fellow crypto believers a good morning. It’s a place where meme-inspired jokes sing in harmony with calls for a radical, utopian future. However, on a fateful day in early December, the worst fear of every internet subculture became a reality.
The brands arrived.
On Dec. 9, Pepsi tweeted that it would release NFTs (a series of microphones, for some reason), rewarding reply tweets with a copy-and-pasted LFG. In response, Budweiser congratulated Pepsi as its “brand friend.” They both declared WAGMI—just two sentient canned beverage juggernauts encouraging each other through tough times. “Every group chat I was in was talking about how that was the most cringeworthy thing they’ve seen,” said Anil Lulla, co-founder of cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital.