What's in a 'gm'?
'It is always gm, it will always be gm'
gm.
Now, I can’t take credit for the above quote- “It is always gm, it will aways be gm”…That goes to the venerable Crypto Punk #6529, herein referred to as simply @6529.
The NFT above (yes, that screen-shotted tweet is in fact an NFT that I paid money for & hold in my wallet) is the very first tweet from the @6529 Twitter account.
At present, the current floor price (lowest ask, but I’m using NFT-speak here) is 0.069ETH (lol, nice), or roughly $90 at the time of writing, accounting for network (gas) fees.
Another quick thing about NFT speak, we don’t talk in dollars, but rather in whatever digital currency/blockchain network we bought it with. For reference, this NFT was minted on the Ethereum blockchain, and is purchased and traded in the native coin/token, called Ether (ETH).
“Who in God’s name spends money on an NFT of a tweet saying ‘gm’ ” you might be wondering.
Well, as you now know, me, for one. And with the complete set of 6500/6500 of them minted & owned, a few other people too.
While this may seem ridiculous to some- and I’m not trying to argue that point- the cultural significance of the tweet and it’s underlying message cannot be understated to those in the NFT community.
Now @6529’s first ‘gm’ tweet wasn’t even the first time a ‘gm’ had been ‘gm-ed’, and while some in the NFT community will certainly want to lay claim to the first, true ‘gm’, it’s just too damn hard to say who actually came up with it.
The fact of the matter is that the first ‘gm’ came long before NFTs- without knowing any one of us could have been the recipient of a ‘gm’ years ago without giving it a second thought.
However, I would strongly argue that in spite of the many ‘gm’s along the way, @6529 was the one that truly popularized the term.
”Ok, all that is great, but what in the hell does it mean and why is it so damn important to you all?”
I think that the best way for me to begin describing this from my point of view, would be to let you in on how I start my days… Every. single. day.
First, is a big old glass of water (you should too). But shortly thereafter, a coffee… I’m human, afterall.
From there, I open the computer, and get ‘gm’-ing.
I shoot a quick ‘gm’ in the company #good-morning Slack channel. If I had my way I’d rename this channel to simply ‘gm’, but I suppose that is just semantics. To be fair, the majority of people do post a simple ‘gm’, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grit my teeth every time someone actually says ‘good morning’.
I then bugger off to my safe space- Twitter, where there are ‘gm’s’ a plenty, and they all need a reply.
Seriously, just go on Twitter and search ‘gm’… I’ll wait.
“We say good morning to each other because we are a friendly, happy, optimistic global community and it is nice to say good morning to your friends as you start your day” - @6529
I want to focus on one word in that quote that I believe gets to the philosophical meaning of ‘gm’— Optimistic.
For reference, NFT sales in Q3 were down 60% from Q2 at $3.4B, which, while certainly substantial, is a far cry from the $12B transacted in Q1 of 2022 (which was lead by Opensea’s reported $5B in NFT sales in the month of January ‘22 alone).
But the optimism in the space remains, and that is why ‘gm’ is more important now than ever before. In a world that has become increasingly digital since the Covid-19 lockdowns and working from home, ‘gm’ is a daily signal to the space that you have ‘logged on’ for the day. That you are present, working, building whatever you are building, or buying whatever you are buying, and most importantly— meme-ing and shit-posting away.
‘gm’ has fuckin’ network effects… Balaji would be proud.
It is a proclamation that you are here and that you believe in the space (NFTs and web3), that you are devoted to moving it forward, to increasing adoption of the underlying technology and its capabilities for unlocking a world of societal value.
That you believe in your bags- be they jpegs, photography, digital art, generative art, music, web3 clubs and utility projects or other that you hold and you will continue to hold- no matter the market conditions.
‘gm’ signals the cultural shift towards a group of people that believe in the self-custody of assets, the demand for self-sovereignty, and of true ownership.
It is a community of incredibly intelligent, passionate, wildly creative, and endlessly hopeful souls, one that welcomes all-comers with arms wide open.
NFTs are our freedom, and ‘gm’ is our battle-cry.
gn.
