The 'Doge' dog meme that Elon Musk loves, explained in 1 minute
NurPhoto/Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty
- Elon Musk will officially lead the Department of Government Efficiency, with Vivek Ramaswamy.
- Its acronym, "DOGE," also references a meme that inspired a cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.
- Here's a quick overview of the history of the meme, which originated with a photo of a Shiba Inu dog.
Elon Musk seemingly can't get enough of "Doge," a popular internet meme from the 2010s.
The four-letter word is also the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency, a new Trump initiative focused on cutting government costs that will be led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
However, Musk has talked about the "Doge" meme long before pitching Trump on the government council.
So what's the meme all about?
Here's the 1-minute version:
- Doge originated in 2010 when Japanese teacher Atsuko Sato posted a photo of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu dog to her blog.
- The picture showed the Shiba Inu on a couch with a tilted head and a puzzled expression.
- The first use of the image as a meme isn't clear, but Reddit helped popularize it and it quickly became an internet sensation, with remakes of the photo shared with humorous Comic Sans text floating around the dog's head.
- The meme later inspired the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which began in 2013 as a mere joke by two software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Dogecoin was built from the open-source software project Litecoin.
- The cryptocurrency, which carries the slogan "the people's cryptocurrency," became popular on Reddit and quickly grew to a market value of $8 million following its inception. Dogecoin's price peaked in May 2021 at $0.72 amid the meme stock trading frenzy and Musk's endorsement of the cryptocurrency.
imgflip/the_meme_explainer
Musk once attributed his interest in the Doge meme to the fact that it has dogs and "the best humor."
The Tesla CEO has continued to post about Doge and Dogecoin over the years. SpaceX named a small satellite designed to explore the moon "DOGE-1" and people have been able to buy Tesla and SpaceX merch using Dogecoin.
Dogecoin's price recently soared 157% following Trump's reelection, reaching a $53 billion market cap as the broader crypto market and Bitcoin rose on the anticipation of looser regulation from Trump's administration.