A Sakura, Japan-based woman published photos of her well-manicured Shiba Inu in 2010 on her electronic journal. The puppy, Kabosu, shot her user a wide-eyed look, a graphic image that immediately jumped from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook and to the rest of the computer.
A image legend was born. The dog was referred to as” DOGE,” a ridiculous nickname that persisted on Reddit. Another minted a crypto in DOGE’s title.
Doge is now considered to be very old in the fast-paced world culture of 15 years. But try to explain that to Elon Musk, who has chosen” Depends” as the name of his initiative to reform the federal government’s administrative equipment, or more accurately, the Department of Government Performance.
It is one of lots of old-internet memorabilia that are baked into his daily vocabulary. A quick glance through Musk’s X serve reveals a slew of aging jargon and memes for the very website. Among them are:
— Regular links to” 420″, a half-century-old slang word for smoking weed said to have started in a high school in Northern California. ( After briefly changing his Twitter bio to” 420,” after smoking what appeared to be a blunt live on the Joe Rogan podcast. )
— frequently mentioning the slang word “69,” which refers to a sexual act that has existed since at least the Kama Sutra. ( Musk, who is 53 years old, is quick to point out that his birthday falls 69 days after 4/20. )
— referring to points he supports as “epic” or “based” These are the preferred adjectives of regular Internet users and those who are fans of Joss Whedon, a producer who produced the late 1990s television line” Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and later acted as the chairman of two of the Avengers films. ( Musk has said he wants to create “based” artificial intelligence with his chatbot, Grok, and recently told Tesla investors he expected an “epic” 2026 ahead for the company. )
Musk’s jargon does look unintelligible to those who aren’t well-versed in online culture. However, Musk’s written sensibilities are a smile to a shared, angry view for his fans and a form of internet convenience food.
Musk’s messages are full of the speech of war and conquering portrayed in video game. That cliched language is a rallying cry for gamers and others from Musk’s net globe who, if they share a common political philosophy, discover in him a person who shares their suspicions of authority and their perception that America has become too “woke.” To them, Musk’s net revelations about what DOGE is upwards come across as much more accurate than a media release or press conference or, worst of all, everything they read in the conventional media. ( It’s a strategy that recalls Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to signal authenticity during his first administration. )
Hasan Piker, a well-known, socially liberal online character who is not a fan of Musk, stated in an interview that” we’re living in the punishment of the geeks era.” This is the geeks ‘ real, exact revenge.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Every image of Musk wielding a chainsaw in a “deal with it” environment ( another meme ) is a testament to the nerd culture he has long associated with. He wore a T-shirt that read” Tech Support” to the first meeting of President Donald Trump’s fresh Cabinet on Wednesday.
His followers speak up to him in his language. They offer suggestions on how DOGE can restore the government by destroying whole parts of it, frequently coded in the vocabulary of images that are common on Reddit. Wojak, a poorly drawn persona that has become a household name on message board 4chan, is a recurring popular.
Musk prods his more than 200 million X fans for assist with choices in virtual elections. And he is attentive. The tycoon, who hosted” Saturday Night Live” and is known for his sense of humor, uses the conversation as a ring of inside jokes.
” Anyone can find their own neighborhood, even if it’s a area frozen in 2010″, Brian Feldman, an internet lifestyle author who has much followed Musk’s achievements, said in an exam.
However, Musk’s communication style is not very modern to those who are deeply immersed in modern internet culture. That is especially true when even contemporary terms like” no cap” ( translation: no lie ) or “lowkey fell off” ( wanted in popularity or relevance ) are already demonstrating their age. As with recent questions about Musk’s claims of superior video game skills, they see cracks in his supernerd facade.
More than people would like to admit, they frequently fall into the web they first access, Feldman said.
At a conservative political conference last week, Musk donned a T-shirt that read,” Not procrastinating,” working on” side quests,” a practice that is prevalent in sprawling role-playing games. He was seen there wearing dark sunglasses, a large gold chain, and a T-shirt. He played off the quote from Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita that Robert Oppenheimer said was going through his mind as he tested the first atomic bomb:” Now, I am become Death. The “destroyer of worlds”
Musk addressed a mostly mute audience,” I have become a meme.” ” There’s living the dream, and there’s living the meme, and that’s pretty much what’s happening”.
Even some of his most devoted followers on X rebuffed. One user wrote that” Elon Musk fell off lowkey.”
Musk’s online vocabulary is a reminder of 2010, when nerd culture was ascendant. Lolcats and Icanhazcheeseeburger were popular meme recipes on Reddit before becoming popular. gamers gathered to hang out and battle through digital dungeons on online role-playing games or in online gaming forums.
This was also the beginning of Musk’s metamorphosis from mere billionaire to internet celebrity. In the second” Iron Man” movie that year, he posed as himself. His online fans consumed it.
All of this also coincided with the rise of Web 2.0, a more social version of the internet. Twitter was a town square long before Musk changed its name and bought it. With” Groups,” a feature that made it possible for users to create their own smaller communities, Facebook expanded beyond likes and status updates. Chat forum 4chan was full of anonymous, often angry online trolls who bonded over vulgar behavior.
Online communities had been around for years, but today’s more sophisticated social networks rewarded the behavior that Musk frequently exhibits today. The appropriate posts could pick up steam and explode on the internet.
Provocateurs moved beyond small-scale trolling to aggressive mass movements, such as Gamergate, a targeted harassment campaign against a female game designer by video game players who claimed she represented a lack of ethics in games journalism. It developed into a social movement that fought diversity, feminism, and what gamers saw as excessively progressive values in film, television, literature, and the video game industry, a point of view that Musk shares.
Gamergate also made the case that, for the better or worse, digital demonstrations might lead to real-world change.
Musk’s tweeting style changed from anodyne company updates to more overt trolling. He tweeted in 2018 that he had secured a buyout offer for Tesla for a stock price of$ 420. When a rival car manufacturer attempted to undercut him on price, Musk once said he would reduce the price of his Tesla Model X to$ 69, 420.
” The gauntlet has been thrown down”! he tweeted. The phrase” The prophecy has come true”
Unlike other tech billionaires, who seemed to live lives far removed from regular internet folk and became less online the richer they got, Musk was making himself relatable with memes, absurdity and relentless posting. And he received a welcome from some of the online community.
” Many people find him off-putting, I think,” coldhealing, a pseudonymous cultural commentator who regularly monitors Musk and other social movements online, said in an interview. ” But there are many people who he resonates with, and even though I think it’s 10 % of the population max, it’s an influential 10 %”.
After the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, Musk’s online life became even more bombastic. He criticized California’s state agencies for preventing him from reopening a Tesla factory and Tesla short-sellers. In 2023, he even live-tweeted photos of himself driving to Mark Zuckerberg’s house, threatening to wrestle the CEO of Facebook. ( They were at the time engaged in the planning of a true fighting match between them. ) It never occurred.
He posted himself playing video games such as Elden Ring, Path of Exile and Diablo IV. One of the wealthiest men in the world revealed to gamers that he was one of them.
In a post to X in February, Mark Kern, a former executive for Blizzard, stated that people shouldn’t mess with gamers. ” We’re forged by endless boss battles against impossible odds. We maintain our resolve. We don’t stop. We are the terminators of the culture war”.
Musk cited the post and said,” Yes.”
Conservatives who don’t spend a lot of time online have also embraced the idea of Musk adopting a bloated federal government, even though many of them aren’t entirely sure what he’s trying to say or when they should laugh.
” It’s validation from people who have no idea what he’s saying but still think he’s speaking this expert language”, said Feldman, the internet culture writer.
However, Musk may be exceeding his online limits. Some of his supporters struggled to let go of his stage performance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, which served as a reminder that it’s difficult to stay cool when you’re not very young. ( Kabosu did not live to see the meme she inspired enter American political life. Shiba Inu, 18, passed away last year.
Anyone else notice a “tpot/tech” vibe-shift? one X user wrote, referring to an online community called” This Part of Twitter”, which is largely composed of tech workers who have historically warmed to Musk. In other words, Musk was starting to appear unpopular and untouchable.
Musk does, however, appear to be doubling down. His posting to X has increased in recent weeks, some days numbering in the hundreds.
And his supporters continue to support him.
Musk uploaded a new meme to his X account on Thursday, one of dozens of posts he made that morning. In it was a photo of Mel Gibson as Mad Max in” The Road Warrior”, the early 1980s action thriller about a shotgun-toting nomad navigating a postapocalyptic world. The meme reads,” Ladies, it’s time to start pondering whether the guy you’re dating has postapocalyptic warlord potential.” ( Mad Max’s wife and son were killed by a biker gang in the first” Mad Max” movie. )
One follower replied with a photo of a man wearing a Trojan helmet and body armor with an assault rifle in one hand and a spear in the other. Out of more than 7, 000 responses, this was one.
The follower added a fire emoji and said,” Yup.”
