In 2010 a woman in Sakura, Japan, posted photos of her well -managed Shiba Inu on her digital magazine. De Hond, Kabosu, glanced its owner with wide eyes, a comic image that quickly jumped from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook and to the rest of the internet.
A meme legend was born. Someone on Reddit called the dog 'doge', a nonsensical nickname that was stuck. Another ditch a cryptocurrency in the name of Doge.
Now, 15 years later, Doge in the fast internet culture is considered very old. But try to tell Elon Musk, who has cooperated 'Doge' for the name of his efforts to close the machines of the federal government, the Ministry of Government Efficiency.
It is one of the dozens of old internet Ephemea that is baked in its daily vocabulary. A short scroll through the X feed from Mr. Musk reveals a menagerie of outdated memes and lingo – dad jokes for the online. They include:
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Frequent references to “420”, half a century old jargon for smoking marijuana who reportedly started in a high school in Northern California. (After smoking what looked like a blunt live on the podcast of Joe Rogan, Mr. Musk briefly changed his Twitter -Bio to “420.”)
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Regularly including the number “69”, a jargon for a sexual act that has been around since the Kama Sutra. (Mr. Musk, who is 53 years old, quickly points out that his birthday will fall for 69 days after 4/20.)
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Call things that he supports 'epic' or 'based'. These are adjectives that are favored by frequent users of Reddit and popularized by fans of Joss Whedon, a director who made the television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in the late nineties and has aimed two of the Avengers films. (Mr. Musk said that he wants to create “based” artificial intelligence with his chatbot, grock, and told Tesla Investors that he expected an “epic” 2026 for the company.)
Mr. Musk's jargon may seem incomprehensible to people who are not steeped in online culture. But for his fans are the dated sensitivities of Mr. Musk a kind of internet comfort food – and a nod to a shared, hurt worldview.
The messages from Mr. Musk are full of the language of warfare and conquest that is depicted in video games. That charged language is a collecting call for gamers and others from the very online world of Mr. Musk who – if they have a common political ideology – see someone who shares his skepticism of authority and their conviction that America has woken up. For them, the online updates from Mr. Musk about what doge encounters so much more fairly than a press release or news conference or – the worst of everything – something they read in the regular media. (It is a strategy that reminds the use of Donald Trump Twitter to signal authenticity during his first administration.)
“We live in the revenge of the Nerds era,” said Hasan Pikeer, a popular, politically progressive online personality that is not a fan of Mr. Musk, in an interview. “This is the real, real revenge of the nerds.”
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Every photo of Mr. Musk who uses a chainsaw while wearing a “deal with it” deal indoors (another meme) represents a triumph of the nerd culture with which he has long identified. On Wednesday he lived the first meeting of the new President Trump cabinet with a T -shirt with the text 'Tech'.
His fans speak to him back in his language. They send suggestions about how Doge can repair the government by dismantling entire parts, often coded in the language of images that are usually found on Reddit. (Wojak, a coarsely drawn character that is popular on the 4chan pin board, is an eternal favorite.)
Mr. Musk Porren are more than 200 million x followers for help with decisions in online polls. And he listens. The conversation will be a feedback job from Insider jokes for the billionaire, who once organized “Saturday Night Live” and is proud of his sense of humor. (Mr. Musk sometimes overestimates his popularity in the comic world. Once he came to the comedian Dave Chappelle on a stage in San Francisco. He was booed.)
“Everyone can find their own community, even if it is a community frozen in 2010,” said Brian Feldman, a writer of internet culture who the Mr. Musk's exploits has long followed, in an interview.
But for those who are steeped in modern internet culture, the communication style of Mr. Musk far from trend. This is especially the case when even current terms such as “no cap” (translation: no lie) or “Lowkey fell” (decreased in popularity or relevance) show all their age. Just as with recent questions about the claims of Mr. Musk about superior video skills, they see cracks in his SuperNede facade.
“More than people would like to admit that they often get trapped on the internet that they come across for the first time,” said Mr. Feldman.
Last week Mr. Musk at a conservative political conference with dark sunglasses, a large golden chain and a T-shirt that said he “did not postpone” but instead worked on “Side Quests” (a usual practice in vast role play games). He played the quote from the Hindu writing Bhagavad Gita of which Robert Oppenheimer said he was going through his head while testing the first atomic bomb: Now I have become death. The destroyer of worlds.
“I became a meme,” said Mr. Musk against a predominantly damping crowd. “There is the life of the dream and there is the life of the meme, and that is almost what happens.”
Even some of his most avid followers withdrawn on X. “Elon Musk fell from Lowkey,” wrote a user.
The online vocabulary of Mr. Musk is a memory of 2010, when the nerd culture was ascendant. Reddit was a meme factory for favorites such as Lolcats and Icanhazcheeseburger. Gamers gathered on web forums or on online role play games to hang around and fight through digital dungeons.
This was also the start of the metamorphosis of Mr. Musk from only billionaire to internet celebrity. That year he appeared as himself in the second “Iron Man” film. His online fans ate it.
All this also coincided with the rise of Web 2.0, a more social version of the internet. Twitter – Long before Mr. Musk bought it and was renamed – was a city square. Facebook went beyond likes and status updates with 'groups', a function with which people could form their own smaller communities. The Chatforum 4chan was full of anonymous, often angry online trolls that tied themselves about vulgar behavior.
While online groups have existed for years, the newer social networks were more closely knitted and rewarded the behavior that Mr. Musk nowadays often shows. The right kind of messages can pick up steam and shoot on the internet.
Provocateurs went beyond small-scale trolls to aggressive mass movements, such as Gamergate, a targeted intimidation campaign against a female game designer by video game players who claimed that she represented a lack of ethics in game journalism. It turned into a social movement that fought against diversity, feminism and what gamers saw as overly progressive values in film, television, literature and the video game – industry – a point of view that Mr. Musk shares.
Gamgate also indicated that digital demonstrations, in front and adversity, can lead to changes in practice.
Mr. Musk's tweet style has changed from the updates from Anodyne Company to more open trolls. In 2018 he tweeted that he had obtained a buy -out offer for Tesla for a share price of $ 420. Once, when a competitive car company tried to under ben for him, Mr Musk said he would drop the costs of his Tesla model X to $ 69,420.
“The glove has been thrown down!” He called on Twitter. “The prophecy is fulfilled.”
In contrast to other technical billionaires, who seemed to live, seemed far away from regular internet people and became less online the richer they received, Mr. Musk made himself recognizable with memes, absurdity and ruthless posts. And parts of the online world embraced him.
“Many people find him unpleasant, I think,” Coldhealing, a pseudonymous cultural commentator who regularly follows Mr. Musk and other social movements online, in an interview. “But there are many people with whom he resonates, and although I think it's 10 percent of the population, it is an influential 10 percent.”
The online life of Mr. Musk became even more bombastic after the Covid Pandemie started in 2020. He attacked Tesla Short-Sellers and California State officials who would not let him reopen Tesla factory. In 2023 he even had live-tweet photos of himself who drove to Mark Zuckerberg's house threatening to struggle the Chief Executive of Facebook. (They were in the grip of organizing a real fighting competition between them at the time. It never happened.)
He placed himself playing Elden Ring, Path or Exile and other video games such as Diablo IV. One of the world's richest men told gamers that he was one of them.
Mark Kern, a former director of video games at Blizzard, wrote last week in a message to X that people should not mess with gamers. “We are forged by endless boss fighting against impossible opportunities. We don't give up. We don't stop. We are the Terminators of the Cultural War. “
“Yes,” wrote Mr. Musk and quoted the post.
Conservatives that do not spend much time online have also embraced the image of Mr. Musk who takes a chainsaw to what they see as a bloated federal government, even if many of them are not sure what he is trying to say or when they are supposed to laugh.
“It is validation of people who have no idea what he says, but still think he is speaking this expert language,” said Mr. Feldman, the internet culture writer.
But Mr. Musk may find his online limits. It was difficult for some of his followers to shake off last week's stage performance at the conservative political action conference, which reminded them that it is difficult to stay cool if you are not in fact very young. (Kabosu did not live to see the meme she inspired to come in American political life. The 18-year-old Shiba Inu died last year.)
“Someone else feels the atmosphere shift in Tot/Tech?” One X user wrote, referring to an online community called “This part of Twitter”, which largely consists of technical employees who are historically heated to Mr. Musk. In other words, Mr. Musk started to see a bit out of contact and more and more unpopular.
Nevertheless, Mr. To double musk. His message on X has increased in recent weeks, some days in the hundreds. And he is still validated by his fans.
On Thursday Mr. Musk another meme on his X account – one of the dozens of posts he had made that morning. In it was a photo of Mel Gibson like Mad Max in 'The Road Warrior', the action thriller from the early eighties about a gun to Nomad who navigated a post -apocalyptic world. In fat -printed letters, the meme said: “Ladies, it's time to think if the man you are dating is post -apocalyptic warpower potential.” (Film lovers note that Max's wife and daughter were murdered by a motorcyclist in the first “Mad Max” film.)
One follower answered with a photo of a man who wore a Trojan helmet and body armor with an attack rifle in one hand and a rocket to the other. It was one of the more than 7,000 answers.
“Yes,” said the follower, who adds a Vuuremoji.
