Kabosu, the world-famous Shiba Inu that inspired the “Doge” meme, died yesterday at the impressive age of 18. Kabosu was a global sensation in the early 2010s, with her photos being superimposed with text and shared on forum sites like Reddit and the now notorious 4chan. Kabosu enjoyed 14 years as an Internet celebrity before her death on April 25th in Sakura, Japan.
The iconic meme that Kabosu inspired is possibly the most influential meme of all time. It even inspired its own cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, with physical coins with a picture of Kabosu stamped onto them. Though Dogecoin enjoyed a brief run after a Reddit charge similar to what happened with GameStop and AMC, it was trading at 17 cents US as of this writing.
Kabosu Nearly Euthanized as a Puppy
Kabosu was rescued from a Japanese shelter by kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sako in 2008. She had been one of 19 pups rescued from a puppy mill. Sadly, many of the other puppies were euthanized, but Kabosu was luckily rescued. Soon after bringing Kabosu home, Sato started posting images of her new friend on her blog.
Sato later said she was “taken aback” in 2010 when she started seeing images of Kabosu. It was mainly the photo featuring the sideways glance shown on the Dogecoin, plastered with silly phrases in bright colors that used the much-maligned Comic Sans font. The term “Doge” originated from the popular webcomic series, “Homestar Runner.”
‘DogeSpeak’ Structure
Properly crafting appropriate phrases for your own meme requires putting yourself into the mind of a dog and imagining how that dog would speak if it could. According to Wikipedia:
“Doge uses two-word phrases in which the first word is almost always one of five modifiers (‘so,’ ‘such,’ ‘many,’ ‘much,’ and ‘very’), and the departure from correct English is to use the modifier with a word that it cannot properly modify. For example, ‘Much respect. So noble.’ uses the Doge modifiers but is not ‘proper’ Doge because the modifiers are used in a formally correct fashion; the Doge version would be ‘Much noble, so respect.’ In addition to these phrases, a Doge utterance often ends with a single word, most often ‘wow’ but with ‘amaze’ and ‘excite’ also being used.”
This nonsensical structure, combined with a seemingly benign picture of a Shiba Inu, mysteriously created hilarious memes that were infinitely shareable.
Meme’s Influence Reaches Highest Levels
Throughout the early 2010s, the meme’s popularity continued to increase, reaching a crescendo in late 2013. Dogecoin was released to much silly fanfare on December 6th, 2013, being praised and promoted by Elon Musk soon after its release. Later that month, there was a Twitter exchange between multiple members of Congress using the meme. As one would expect, a few of them didn’t do it right.
Unlike many other meme phenomena, such as Grumpy Cat and Boo the Pomeranian, Sato never capitalized on Kabosu’s massive popularity as Doge. Sato said in 2013 that she only hoped the meme would raise awareness for animal shelters and rescue programs.
Though we mourn the loss of Kabosu today, she will live on in our hearts and web browsers. As long as there is an Internet, there will be Doge.
Such sad. Very miss.
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