Doge meme: Here’s what’s behind the funny dog picture

The Doge meme shows a dog with a wry look. The image has been around since 2010 and gained new attention through Twitter in 2023

Doge meme: origin and meaning

Memes are popularly used online to comment on situations in a funny way. The well-known Doge Meme is already a classic.

• The Doge Meme (pronounced “dodge” or “doggie”) shows a dog of the Shiba Inu breed. This one has a somewhat wry look and raised eyebrows. The meme is often captioned with snippets of sentences like “Wow”, “Such awesome”, “many …” or “so …” in Comic Sans.

• The meme is used to express ironic enthusiasm, scepticism or reserved delight.

• A dog named Kabosu is the original subject for the painting. This was adopted by a Japanese kindergarten teacher from a dog breeding farm. The woman posted photos of Kabosu online on her blog. The image of the dog went viral on Reddit in 2010, and in 2013 the associated meme became popular.

• Doge was deliberately used as a misspelling for the English “dog”. The trend is much older and is based on a series called “Homestar Runner”. Since then, Doge has been used synonymously for pictures with funny looking animals and a Comic Sans font.

Doge-Coin and Doge on Twitter

The Doge meme has now achieved cult status. It even has its own currency now.

• You can buy the so-called Dogecoins since 2013. Originally, the inventors Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer only wanted to make a joke and start a parody of the Bitcoin.
• However, the idea of the coin with the Shiba Inu on it became a complete success. In the year of its release, the Dogecoin was already considered the ninth largest cryptocurrency.
• Twitter CEO Elon Musk is also interested in cryptocurrencies. In the past, he has influenced share prices several times through his public statements and has even had to deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a result.
• On 3 April 2023, Musk suddenly changed the Twitter logo from the blue bird to Kabosu – the dog from the Doge meme. There was no further explanation. However, the price of the Dogecoin immediately shot up.