ANATOMY OF A MEME: DOGE
The internet community is known for not making any sense at all. Various inexplicable fads come and go (lolcats, rickrolling), memes sprouting out of the very randomest soils and plaguing computers all across the world with their cruel, unfunny presence. It almost makes you wish that the internet had quality control, and before any meme was allowed into the Real World it would have to pass a series of rigorous tests to determine whether or not it is fit for human consumption. You Pom Gana would have been left on the cutting-room floor, and Not Bad would have been aborted in the womb.
Fantastically, the latest meme sweeping the internet is very much one that the Board of Meme Quality would have certified as being an A+. I speak of Doge, and if you haven't yet stared into his searching black eyes, a little bit of the world's wonder is missing from your life.
Doge (pronounced however you want and don't let anyone tell you any different) is a simple enough concept. Take a Shiba Inu (that ridiculously cute little Japanese dog breed). Photograph it being silly, or merely just being. Put in little snippets of contextually-relevant text in the photo, surrounding the doge like a window into his very soul. Nonsensical misspelled text that takes grammar as a suggestion it won't take, thank-you-very-much. You must also include 'wow' somewhere in there.
Now if you are a sane person the previous paragraph would have sounded completely pointless and un-fun. Why then do people love doge so much? It's hard to describe, but the text is often quite witty in a dim sort of way. However the bulk of the appeal undoubtedly lies in the shibas themselves. Those furry, smiling bastards are simply too cute to not smile at. A good shiba meme is a fine tonic for the general feeling of low-grade depression that characterises the 2010's.
Sadly we're at the point where doge's inherent appeal is struggling against the sheer over-saturation of the meme, with the inevitable over-use and decline in average quality of posts this always brings. Regardless the good stuff is still out there and you can find it with some effort. And it ought to be enough to have lived in a time (however brief) that can be accurately described as:
‘much wow'
‘ very doge'
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