The earliest documented use of the ligma joke predates the Ninja hoax. Urban Dictionary had an entry for "Ligma" dating back to June 13, 20181. On May 28, 2018, Instagram user Galevik posted a video of a Twitter conversation where he told activist David Hogg "you should boycott ligma," setting up the classic bait4. That post picked up over 307,000 views within two months4.

On June 6, 2018, a Donald Trump parody account tweeted a photoshopped image of the president dabbing alongside a mock conversation using the ligma joke on a journalist4. A subreddit dedicated to the joke launched in mid-June 20183.

But the moment that turned ligma from an underground prank into a full-blown internet event started on July 16, 2018. Instagram user ninja_hater, an account with around 3,000 followers, posted a crudely Photoshopped image of Fortnite streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins ascending to heaven, greeted by deceased figures including Michael Jackson, Tupac, Harambe, Billy Mays, and Lil Peep3. The caption read: "Spread this. Let's make fake news"2.

Ligma crossed over from internet joke to mainstream news story within a week of the Ninja hoax. The Verge, Polygon, Daily Dot, Daily Mail, Metro, and The Sun all published explainers about the meme in late July 2018132786. PewDiePie's coverage alone brought nearly 5 million views in its first day3.

The October 2022 "Rahul Ligma" prank at Twitter HQ demonstrated the joke's staying power four years after its peak. The fact that professional journalists at CNBC and other outlets fell for a name that was literally "ligma" showed how the joke still worked on people unfamiliar with internet culture5. The incident became a meta-commentary on media literacy in the social media age.

Microsoft's temporary banning and subsequent reinstatement of the "Ligma" Xbox gamertag in August 2018 raised questions about platform moderation and whether companies should police usernames based on trending jokes5.

The ligma joke didn't come from nowhere. It sits in a lineage of phonetic trap jokes that stretches back years. The "bofa deez nuts" format, where someone mentions "bofa" to set up the punchline "both of deez nuts," was already well-established internet humor5. Brady Olson, who ran a satirical 2016 presidential campaign under the name "Deez Nuts," confirmed to Rolling Stone that he chose the pseudonym based on the bofa meme5. Ligma was just the newest version of this template, swapping "bofa" for a word that sounds like "lick my"1.

The ninja_hater account started as a joke aimed at a friend before its creator decided to keep it going for fun3. The person behind the account, who declined to be identified, told Polygon they never expected the hoax to travel beyond their small circle. "Honestly, I imagined a few friends I had on this account would repost it, their followers get fooled a little bit, and that would be it"3. Instead, Instagram's meme community picked it up and ran with it. Ninja_hater described themselves as part of Instagram's niche meme page ecosystem, a network of accounts both large and small that collaborate on spreading jokes3.

The hoax's success relied on a specific convergence of factors. Ninja was at the absolute peak of his fame in mid-2018. He had broken Twitch's streaming record in March 2018 playing Fortnite with Drake, Travis Scott, and NFL player JuJu Smith-Schuster, then broke his own record again in April7. He won the 100-player Pro-Am charity tournament at E3 2018 alongside DJ Marshmello7. His streaming schedule was intense: 9:30 AM to 4 PM, a three-to-four hour break, then back online from 7 PM until 2 or 3 AM, with a minimum of 12 hours daily3. When someone that active goes quiet for even part of a day, fans notice. That brief silence gave the death hoax just enough plausibility for the ligma trap to work.

As the meme spread, the joke expanded beyond its original form. Spin-off terms appeared: "Sugma" ("suck my"), "Sugondese" ("suck on these," framed as a fictional nationality), "Grabahan" ("grab a hand full of deez nuts"), and "Bofa" (the original "both of" joke repurposed as another fake disease)4. Copypasta subreddits filled up with elaborate fake PSAs about the disease. One Reddit post framed it as a medical announcement: "Ligament interruption gait maximum aridity, or LIGMA for short, is a serious disease that we need to be on the look out for"3.

Even brands got involved. Meijer, a Midwest big-box retailer, was asked about ligma on Twitter and pointedly refused to take the bait2. Meanwhile, internet comedian SupremePatty posted a video of his own "Ligma diagnosis" that pulled over 3.1 million views8.

Ninja eventually accepted his fate. After initially trying to suppress the joke, he started making ligma jokes himself, including cracking one at PewDiePie1. The meme had won. In August 2018, Microsoft started receiving complaints about Xbox gamertags "Ligma" and "MrsLigma" and renamed them. The owner of the original "Ligma" tag told Eurogamer the name predated the meme and was over 12 years old. After a wave of Reddit support, Microsoft reinstated the gamertag5.

The joke kept finding new targets. In October 2018, Snopes had to debunk false reports that rapper Machine Gun Kelly had died from a "Ligma overdose"5. In July 2021, Lead Stories confirmed that "Ligma" was not a new COVID-19 variant, calling it "the latest version of an old dirty joke"5.

The most high-profile ligma incident after the Ninja hoax came in October 2022, when two amateur improv actors showed up outside Twitter's San Francisco headquarters on the day of Elon Musk's takeover pretending to be fired employees named "Rahul Ligma" and "Daniel Johnson"5. Multiple major news outlets reported the prank as real. The Times of India called it "one of the greatest pranks on the Internet"5. TechCrunch writer Amanda Silberling noted she had to explain the ligma meme on four different podcasts because "a herd of reporters did not get the joke"5.