A brief history of the idgaf wars

On Twitter the idgaf – the acronym for I don't give a fuck – wars rage on. There are casualties and commanders and weapons. You'd be hard-pressed to find a viral figure who has yet to be drafted.

You may have stumbled onto the battlefield or been an unwitting bystander. There are a seemingly infinite number of idgaf wars being fought at all times with clear winners and losers. The rules of combat are simple: To win the idgaf war is to be perceived as caring less than another party. To lose the idgaf wars is to be caught-red handed giving a fuck. 

In a recent battle, a group of civilians won an idgaf war when a man attempted to rob a nail salon and no one in the establishment moved an inch. In other news, Kim Cattrall also won an idgaf war for her cameo in the Sex and The City reboot And Just Like That.

Anyone can be engaged in an idgaf war, but most commonly it is a celebrity, the kind that's deeply embedded in Twitter's cultural consciousness. The celebrity is blissfully unaware of their military campaign. Instead war correspondents (stan accounts) place them in combat like a pop culture game of Risk.

In the most recent example of a viral moment turned idgaf war, Keke Palmer posted photos in the sheer, black dress and bodysuit she wore to an Usher show in Las Vegas that her boyfriend, Darius Jackson, publicly shamed. When Pop Base – who is typically at the scene of the crime – shared the news quote tweets about Palmer winning the idgaf war rolled in. This case study sets up Palmer and Jackson as the two adversaries of a personal idgaf war. Other instances aren't so clear about who is involved in the war. 

Sometimes it seems like the idgaf war is being waged between every single living person, with each idgaf winner proposed as the one true victor. When a celebrity is involved, these can be idgaf moments that you don't need any context to understand like someone zoning out during a press tour or giving little reaction to a fan. But with panopticontent, any viral nobody can also be enlisted. You can be involved in your own personal idgaf war with people you know in real life. 

But not just individuals can be implicated in an idgaf war. For example, fans pit Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christoper Nolan's Oppenheimer against each other in its own sort of conflict dubbed "Barbenheimer." Barbie's marketing is ubiquitous, while Oppenheimer's relies primarily on images of its star Cillian Murphy's anguished face. As one Twitter user stated it plainly, Oppenheimer is winning the idgaf war of Barbenheimer. 

How long has this war been raging? it's hard to say. The details on who first provoked the idgaf wars are hazy. The first tweet about the idgaf wars, according to Know Your Meme, dates back to August 12, 2022. That tweet is an indictment of the idgaf Twitter wars, indicating that its history extends further back in time. The phrase was first defined on Urban Dictionary a year prior as something that happens, "once things become awkward between you and your ex/friend and you and/or them pretend not to care." What is clear is that the scale and scope of the idgaf wars has evolved since 2021. Today the phrase is inescapable. 

The lore of the idgaf war is constantly being written. Being in (or posting from) idgafghanistan, a portmanteau of idgaf and Afghanistan, means you're winning or in the lead of the idgaf wars. On Saturday (July 8) Twitter user @ihateyara wrote, "Muting someone's story is like having a grenade in the idgaf war." If you follow the logic of the idgaf war, these tweets often fall apart – to mute someone's Instagram story you have to give a fuck about those Instagram stories enough to mute them – but the same thing happens when you consider the logic of actual wars. 

To lose the idgaf war is a very convoluted way to admit you care. The idgaf war speaks to the online urge to constantly assert how aloof and disaffected you are and some reject this notion. One Twitter user wrote, "will never engage in an idgaf war i care deeply and want you to know. It's a beautiful thing to be able to care for someone and it's a beautiful thing to feel cared for." Another expressed, "was dishonorably discharged from the idgaf war because I really do gaf."

Perhaps we should follow their lead and enlist in the igaf (I give a fuck) wars.