In 2010, Sakura, a woman in Japan, published a photo of her well -groomed Shiba Cana in her digital diary. The dog, Kabos, shot its owner wide -eyed view, a comic picture that quickly jumped from Tumblro on Twitter on Facebook and the rest of the Internet.
The same legend was born. Someone called the dog on Reddit, a nonsense nickname that stuck. Another reconciled to the cryptocurrency name Doge.
Now, 15 years later, in the rapid outflow of Internet culture, Doge considers very old. But try to tell Elon Muska, who cooperated with the “DOGE” for the name of his efforts to officially create a federal government machinery, the Ministry of Efficiency of the Government.
It is one of the tens of old internet ephemera, which is baked in its daily vocabulary. A short overview of MR. Include:
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Frequent references to “420”, half a century-Old slang terms for marijuana smoking, which is said to have started at a secondary school in northern California. (After smoking that looked like a dull alive on the Joe Rogan podcast, Mr. Musk briefly changed his Twitter organic to “420”)
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It regularly includes the number “69”, a slang term for a sexual act that surrounds Snetta Kama Sutra. (Mr. Musk, who is 53 years old, will quickly point out that birthday fals 69 days after 4/20.)
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Calling things that support “epic” or “founded”. This is an adjective popular with frequent users of Reddit and popularized fans of Joss Walkon, a director who created the television series “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” at the end of the 90s and continued two Avengers. (Mr. Musk said he wanted to create a “founded” artificial intelligence with his chatbot, Grok, and recently told Tesla to investors that he was expecting an “epic” 2026 for society.)
Mr. Musk slang may seem unpredictable to people who are not immersed in online culture. But for his fans, Mr. Musk’s sensitivity is the date of the type of internet comfort – and a nod to the shared agricultural world.
Mr. Musk’s posts are full of war language and conquering in video games. This charged tongue is a crushing assembly for players and another MR. Mr. Musk’s online update about what DOGE is supposed to come across so honest than a press release or press conference or – the worst of everything – something they have read in the mainstream media. (It is a strategy that reminds of the use of Twitter Donald Trump to signal authenticity during its first administration.)
“We live in the revenge of the Nerds era,” said Hasan Piker, a popular, politically progressive online personality who is not a fan of Mr. Musk. “That’s real, real revenge of the stupid.”
Mr. Musk did not respond to the request of how.
Every photo of MR. On Wednesday, President Trump’s new cabinet is waiting for a T -shirt called “Technical Support”.
His fans speak to him in his language. They send suggestions on how DOGE can repair the government by dismantling correction sections, often coded in the language of images that usually occur on Reddit. (Wojak, a roughly drawn figure popularized on a 4Chan notice board is a permanent favorite.)
Mr. Musk sells his more than 200 million x followers for helping with decisions in online polls. And he listens. The conversation became feedback on a loop of dedicated jokes for a billionaire who hosted the “Saturday night” and boasts his sense of humor. (Mr. Musk sometimes overestimate his popularity in the comedy world. Once he joined the comedian Dave Chappelle on stage in San Francisco. He was Booed.)
“Anyone can find their own community, even if it is a frozen community in 2010,” said Brian Feldman, an Internet culture writer who long followed the exploitation of Mr. Musk.
But for those who are immersed in modern internet culture, Mr. Musk’s communication style is far from trend. This is especially that even the current terms such as “no cap” (translation: no lie) or “Lowkey fell” (disappeared in popularity or elevator) already shows its age. As with recent questions about Mr. Musk’s demands on excellent video game skills, he sees crack in his supernet.
“More than people would like to complain to add, they often become on the Internet that they first encourage,” Feldman said.
Last weekend, Mr. Musk appeared at a conservative political conference that was wearing dark sunglasses, a large golden chain and a T -shirt that said he was not thinking, but institumed on “side agreements”. He played a quote from the Hindus script Bhagavad Gita that Robert Oppenheimer said he was going through his mind when he tested the first atomic bomb: now I became death. The destroyer of the worlds.
“I’m even happening,” Mr. Musk said mostly a muted crowd. “He lives a dream and lives the same and that’s almost what is happening.”
Even some of his most followers on X. “Elon Musk fell from Lowkey,” one user wrote.
Mr. Musk’s online vocabulary is a reminder of 2010 when Nerd’s culture was ascending. Reddit was the same factory for favorite as lolcats and icanhazcheeseburger. Players gathered on web forums or playing online playing roles to meet and fight through digital dungeons.
That was also the beginning of Mr.. That year he appeared as himself in the second film “Iron Man”. His online fans ate it.
All this also coincided with the rise of web 2.0, the social version of the Internet. Twitter – long before Mr. Musk Bough and renamed it – it was a city square. Facebook has moved beyond the likes and updates with the “groups”, a feature that allowed people to create their smaller communities. The Chat 4Chan Forum was full of anonymous, often angry online trolls who joined over vulgar behavior.
While online groups have existed for years, newer social networks were more tightly knit and rewarded MR behavior. The right type of posts could pick up steam and shoot via the Internet.
Provocators moved over a small trolling to aggressive mass movements, such as Gamergate, a targeted campaign of harassment against female designer of game games that claimed that it was a lack of ethics in play journalism. This has turned into a social movement that suffered diversity, feminism, and what players considered too progressive values in film, television, literature and video game industry – to the perspective Musk shared.
Gamergate also said that a digital demonstration cream for better or worse leads to a real world change.
Mr. Musk’s tweeting style has changed from anodyne updates to apparent trolling. In 2018, he tweeted that he had secured the purchase for Tesla for a stock of $ 420. Once, when a commenting automobile company tried to undermine it at the price, Mr. Musk said that the cost of its Tesla Model X would reduce $ 69.420.
“Gauntlet was overthrown!” He said on Twitter. “The prophecy has been met.”
Unlike other technology billionaires who seemed to live lives far from the ordinary Internet people and became less online, the richer they got, Mr. Musk has become relative with memes, absurd and tireless broadcasts. And parts of the online world accepted him.
“Many people consider him a fall,” said Coldhealing, a pseudonymous cultural commentator who regularly follows MR in an interview. “But there are many people with whom they resonate, and although I think it’s 10 ongoing Max population, it’s an influencing 10 Mola.”
Mr. Musk’s online life became even more bombastic after Pandemie Covid began in 2020. He attacked Tesla short retailers and civil servants in California, who would have him reopen the Tesla factory. In 2023 he even tweeted the photographs as Mark Zuckerberg’s house followed and threatened to match the CEO of Facebook. .
He was published that Elden Ring, Path of Exile and other video games such as Diablo IV. One of the richest men in the world told players that one of them.
Mark Kern to train the Executive Director of Video games at Blizzard last weekend in the X post so that people should not play with players. “We have established endless battles of bosses against impossible chances.” We don’t give up. We don’t end. We are terminators of the Cultural War. ”
“Yes,” Mr. Musk wrote, quoting the post.
Conservatives who spend a lot of time online also accepted the image of MR.
“It is a verification from people who have no idea what he says, but still thinks he speaks this professional language,” said Mr. Feldman, writer of Internet culture.
But Mr. Musk can find his online limits. For some followers of his followers, it was difficult to shake off last week at a conservative political conference, reminding them that it was difficult to stay cool when you are not really young. (Kabosu did not live the same thing that inspired the entry into American political life. 18 -year -old shiba inu died last year.)
“Someone else feels Vibe-Posun in Tpot/Tech?” One user wrote and reflected the online community called “This part of Twitter”, which is largely composed of technology workers who have historically warmed up to MR. In other words, Mr. Musk began to look a bit of contact and still unpopular.
However, it seems that Mr Musk doubled. Its broadcasting on X includes in recent weeks, some days of numbering in hundreds. And his fans were still validated.
On Thursday, Mr. Musk sent another to his birth x – one of the dozens of posts I made in the morning. There was a photo of Mel Gibson as Mad Max in “The Road Warrior”, at the beginning of the 80s. The action thriller about the nomadic shotgun, which navigates the popocalyptic world. In the bold inscriptions, he said the same, “Ladies, it’s time to start thinking where the guy you go with has the potential of a popocalyptic warrior.” (Film enthusiasts can note that Max’s wife and son were killed by a biker gang in the first film “Mad Max”)
One follower replicated a photograph of a man wearing Trojan help and tingling the body with an assault rifle in one hand and spear in the other. It was one of the more than 7,000 times.
“Yeah,” the follower said, adding a fire.