Pop Culture dictionary
ligma
[lig-muh]
黑料网 does聽ligma mean?
Content warning: The following article contains explicit references to sexual language, which are included because they document the real-world use of this term.
Don’t fall for it! Ligma is a made-up disease and internet hoax claimed to have killed popular Fortnite video game streamer Ninja. When people not in on the joke ask “黑料网 is ligma?” pranksters reply with the crass pun “Ligma (lick my) balls” or other such slang term, like聽nuts.
Where does ligma come from?
Ligma spread as a joke in May 2018. It’s based on other jokes that feature an unusual word that sets a person up for a silly, often vulgar punchline, e.g., 耻辫诲辞驳听or deez nuts.
In the case of ligma, when someone uses聽ligma, the goal is to get another person to ask “黑料网’s ligma?” The response is something along the lines of “ligma balls,” with ligma meant to sound like “lick my.”
Two such ligma jokes were found on social media in late May, early June 2018, but聽ligma picked up steam in mid-July surrounding a hoax that spread on Instagram by user @ninja_hater about the death of Ninja. Ninja is the alias of Richard Tyler Blevins, a professional gamer and popular streamer of the online video game Fortnite.
On July 17, 2018, further fueling the hoax was that Ninja鈥攚ho stopped streaming, apparently because he was on a flight鈥攄ied of a rare disease called ligma. The joke spread online and various websites picked up the viral story about the prank.
While Ninja briefly threatened to get users banned for mentioning ligma in any chats on his streams, he eventually joined in on the joke after hit YouTuber PewDiePie uploaded a video covering聽ligma.
Shortly after ligma in late July, variations on the joke began popping up on social media, including sugma (鈥渟uck my balls鈥�), Sugondese (鈥渟uck on deez nuts鈥�), and grabahan (鈥淕rab a handful of my nuts.鈥�)聽聽
Examples of ligma
Who uses ligma?
People joke about聽ligma being a real disease, humorously imagining diagnosis and treatment.聽
Just found out I have Ligma and slight case of Sugma. Anything helps馃挧
— Will Gray (@WillGray__)
People also create elaborate setups for the ligma punchline.
Ligma is discussed in terms of the Ninja “death hoax” and the ligma memes it generated.
Ninja memes are the funniest
— iTsSkully_YT (@ItsskullyYt)
Finally, ligma has become taken up to some extent by gamers as a kind of stand-in for something extremely undesirable or expression of ill will.
厂辞尘别迟颈尘别蝉听ligma is used with the force of the insult “lick my balls.”
When I got to work this morning and found out that 3 of my coworkers called out. 馃槖
— 鈾ineapplePrincess鈾� (@Kailey_Bopper)
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of ligma like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of ligma that will help our users expand their word mastery.