Doge Meme: Very Popular Much Wow So Trend

      

        Since few months, the Internet have seen a new “meme” taking over multiple humoristic websites. After the huge take over by the cats, it was time for a new pet to show up. Its name is nothing more than Doge. This Doge Meme, has it is called, is composed by a Shiba Inu dog (Shibe), and with text, most of the time in an approximate english, written in Comic Sans Ms font in the front of the picture. It is easy to recognize the meme, especially because it is formally characterized by simple expressions, in a "subtly inappropriate" way, with a regular use of adverbs like "many", "much", "such", "very" ou "so", to a name or an adjective. The added text is supposed to reflect the shibe's inner thought process about the world around it.

       In June 24th, 2005, in an episode of Homestar Runner's puppet show, the term Doge is for the first time use. Actually, it's just a misspelled version of the word "dog" that we can see in the episode “Biz Cas Fri 1” where Homestar calls Strong Bad his “d-o-g-e” while trying to distract him from the work he is doing. But it's was only years later, in 2010, that the Doge Meme fund a face and that the misspelled word was mentioned on the website Reddit.  

       For the original picture, it come from a japanese kindergarten teacher, Atsuko Sato, who rescued Kabosu, a Shiba inu dog, from a puppy factory. She starts to upload its picture in her personal blog. The most popular is the one where Kabosu is sitting on a couch while glaring sideways at the camera with raised eyebrows. 

       After that, it's the humoristic platforms Tumblr, Reddit and 4chan that made the meme grown in popularity. Most meme creators photoshop the shibe into other photos, or they go straight ahead and paste its face onto other characters, people, animals or objects and it's mostly what had led the meme to become a real phenomenon. According to Google Trends, the popularity have been increasing a lot since november 2013 and it keeps rising. Google have even created an easter egg for “doge” in the Youtube's research bar. And finaly MTV have listed, the doge meme, number 12 among the “50 things that the Pop Culture have brought us” in 2013.

        Fortunately, the phenomenon is not stopping here and have found a new way to expand. That's how on December, 8, 2013, the dogecoin was introduced. The symbol is the portrait the most used of Kabosu, surrounded with the sentence " very currency wow much coin how money so crypto plz mine v rich ". The crypto currency was created by the programmer Billy Markus frm Portland in Oregon, who hoped to create a fun currency that could reach a broader demographic similar to Bitcoin and its derivatives. In December, 2013, more than 20 millions of doge-coins are imitated, for a 12 000-dollar exchange value. On February 18th, 2014, the doge-coin had an exchange value of a tenth of penny. The purpose of the Doge-coin is to be exchange for goods and services among the participants. For example, the Doge-coin community and foundation have encouraged fund-raising for charities and other notable causes. On January 19, 2014, a Doge-coin fund-raiser manage to raise $50,000 for the Jamaican Bobsled Team, who was qualified, but dew to a lack of money, could not afford to go to the Sochi Winter Olympics. A proof that even the silliest idea at the beginning can become something great.  

Raphaelle Meillat