The Doge memes are in effect now that Elon Musk himself has landed a job in Donald Trump’s new administration.
It comes after he left three with almost £100 million behind him the successful campaign of the convicted criminal to win the US presidential elections on November 5.
Trump has appointed the world’s richest man – worth an estimated £161 billion – as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In a statement, the president-elect said Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, eliminate redundant regulations, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies.”
Many of the memes created in response have highlighted Musk’s cost-cutting credentials.
He claimed to have laid off 80% of X’s workforce within the first year of purchasing the social media platform – then known as Twitter. Within a month, half of the employees were fired.
But it’s the department’s acronym, and its striking similarity to a popular meme that Musk is fond of, that is fueling the flood of memes.
“Doge”, an intentional misspelling of the word “dog”, is a meme based on a Shiba Inu dog that has been around since 2010.
It has become a meme with many meanings, often subtitled in broken English, often with a hint of sarcasm.
The meme was firmly entrenched in internet culture even before it became the namesake of a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, also known as a “meme coin.”
Musk is such a fan of the meme that he briefly changed Twitter’s blue bird to Doge, months before renaming the social media platform X.
After this, the price of Dogecoin was driven up by more than 36,000%.
This resulted in a $258 billion lawsuit against him for allegedly manipulating the price of the currency.
Musk has regularly posted images of the dog for years, with his lawyers describing his public statements about the coin as “harmless and often silly tweets.”
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