In 2010, a woman from Japanese Sakura posted photos of her carefully trimmed Shii INU to her digital magazine. The dog Kabosu opened her owner’s eyes wide open, a comic image that quickly jumped from tumblr to Twitter to Facebook and other internet.
The meme legend was born. Someone on Reddit calls the dog “Doge”, which is a ridiculous nickname. Another created cryptocurrency with the name Doge.
Now, 15 years later, in the rapid loss of Internet culture, Doge is considered very old. But, try to tell this about Elon Musk, the name he worked hard to join the federal government’s machinery, more formally the Ministry of Government Efficiency.
It is one of dozens of old modern plants that are baked into his everyday vocabulary. A short reel browsed Mr. Musk’s X feed, revealing an aging meme and terminology – Dad jokes online. They include:
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The frequent mention of “420”, which is a century and half of lang language, is said to have started at a high school in Northern California. (Mr. Musk briefly introduced his Twitter Bio as “420” while smoking on the Joe Rogan podcast.)
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Regularly including the number of “69”, a sexual act that has been around at least since the Kama Sutra. (Mr. Musk, 53, was quick to point out that his birthday was 69 days after 4/20.)
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Calling him support something “epic” or “based”. These are adjectives favored by common Reddit users and are promoted by fans of Joss Whedon, who produced the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” TV series in the late 1990s and went on to direct two Avengers movies. (Mr. Musk said he wanted to create “based” artificial intelligence with his chatbot Grok, recently told Tesla investors that he expects the company to “epic” ahead of 2026.)
Mr. Musk’s lang language seems to be difficult to understand for people who are not soaked in online culture. But for his fans, Mr. Musk’s outdated sensitivity is an internet-friendly food and a nod to a shared, aggrieved worldview.
Mr. Musk’s posts are filled with the language of war and conquest portrayed in video games. That loading language is a call for gamers and other people in the very online world of Mr. Musk, who have shared political ideology, saw in him a skeptic who shared authority, and who they believed America was too “wake up”. For them, Mr. Musk’s online updates about Doge are more honest than press releases or press conferences, or, worst of all, what they’ve read in mainstream media. (It’s a strategy that recalls Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to signal authenticity during his first administration.)
“We live in revenge in the nerdy era,” Hasan Piker, a popular, politically progressive online figure who doesn’t like Mr. Musk’s fans, said in an interview. “This is the real revenge of the nerd.”
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Each photo of Mr. Musk waving his saw while wearing “handling” sunglasses indoors (another meme) represents a victory for the nerd culture he has long recognized. He attended the first meeting of President Trump’s new cabinet on Wednesday, wearing a T-shirt with “Technical Support” written on it.
His fans speak to him in his words. They advise Doge on how to solve the government’s proposal by dismantling the entire section, which is usually encoded in the image language that Reddit is usually on Reddit. (Wojak is a common rough-drawn character on Message Board 4Chan, a year-round favorite.)
Mr. Musk has raised over 200 million followers in online polls to help them help. He listened. The feedback loop of conversation became a feedback loop for the inside jokes of billionaires, who once hosted “Saturday Night Live” and was proud of his sense of humor. (Mr. Musk sometimes overestimated his popularity in the comedy world. Once he joined the comedian Dave Chappelle on the San Francisco stage.)
“Even a community that was frozen in 2010, anyone can find their own community,” Internet culture writer Brian Feldman said in an interview.
But for those who are full of modern Internet culture, Mr. Musk’s communication style is far from a trend. This is especially true, even if the current terms “hat-free” (translation: no lie) or “low-key drop” (in popularity or relevance decreases) have shown their age. Like the recent question about Mr. Musk’s claims about advanced video game skills, they saw cracks in the surface of his super workout.
“More than people admit, they’re often stuck in the internet they first encountered,” Feldman said.
Last week, Mr. Musk made an appearance at a conservative political conference, wearing black sunglasses, a big gold bar and a T-shirt saying he “don’t procrastinate” but instead engaged in “Side Quests” (a common practice in a massive role-playing game). He played the words of Robert Oppenheimer from the Hindu Bible bhagavad gita, thinking about his mind as he tested the first atomic bomb: Now, I am dead. Destroyer of the world.
“I became a meme,” Mr. Musk told a silent crowd. “Have dreams, have memes to survive, that’s almost what’s happening.”
Even his most enthusiastic follower on X backed back. “Elon Musk fell from low profile,” one user wrote.
Mr. Musk’s online vocabulary reminds you that nerd culture in 2010 is rising. Reddit is a meme factory for favorites like Lolcats and Icanhazcheese burgers. Gamers gather on online forums or online role-playing games to hang out and fight through digital dungeons.
This is also the beginning of Mr. Musk’s pervert from a simple billionaire to an internet celebrity. That year, he appeared in the second “Iron Man” movie. His online fans ate it.
All of this coincides with the rise of Web 2.0 (a more social version of the internet). Twitter – Twitter, which was purchased and renamed in Musk, was a town square. Facebook goes beyond “groups” likes and status updates, a feature that enables people to form their own smaller communities. Chat Forum 4chan is full of anonymous, often angry online trolls who have connections to vulgar behavior.
Although online groups have been around for years, newer social networks are weaving more closely and rewarding the behaviors Mr. Musk often shows today. The right post might start steaming and shoot on the internet.
Provocateurs have moved beyond small trolls toward active mass movements such as Gamergate, a targeted harassment campaign against female game designers who claim she lacks ethics in the gaming press. It became a social movement with diversity, feminism and values that gamers believe are too gradual in the film, television, literature and video game industries, which Mr. Musk shared.
Gamergate also shows that digital demonstrations may lead to real-world changes.
Mr. Musk’s tweet style went from an update from Anodyne Company to a more obvious troll. In 2018, he tweeted that he received a Tesla acquisition offer for $420. Once, when a competing car company tried to weaken his price, Musk said he would reduce the cost of the Tesla Model X to $69,420.
“The gloves were thrown down!” he announced on Twitter. “The prophecy has come true.”
Unlike other tech billionaires who seem to live a life far from the lives of regular internet residents, whose online presence is getting richer and richer, Mr. Musk makes himself relevant to memes, ridiculous and ruthless posts. Part of the online world embraced him.
“I think many people find him offensive,” Coldhealing, a cultural commentator in the post, regularly followed Mr. Musk and other social movements in an interview. “But there are a lot of people who resonate with him, and although I think it’s 10% of the largest population, it’s 10% of the impact.”
Mr. Musk’s online life has become even more bombarded after the 2020 co-pandemic. He attacked Tesla short sellers and California officials who did not allow him to reopen his Tesla factory. In 2023, he even played live photos of himself driving to Mark Zuckerberg’s house, threatening to wrestle the CEO of Facebook. (At the time, they were in the pain of organizing a real battle game between them.) Never happened. )
He posted his own way to play Elden Ring, Exile and other video games (such as Diablo IV). One of the richest people in the world is telling gamers that he is one of them.
Blizzard’s former video game director Mark Kern wrote in a post to X last week that people should not be confused with gamers. “We are forged by endless boss fights with impossible odds. We don’t give up. We won’t stop. We are the endorseers of the cultural war.”
“Yes,” Mr. Musk quoted the post.
Conservatives who don’t spend a lot of time online also embraced the image Mr. Musk saw in a chain way, i.e. they thought it was a swollen federal government, even though many of them weren’t sure what he wanted to say or when he should laugh.
“This is a verification of people who don’t know what he is talking about, but still think he is speaking this expert language,” said Feldman, an internet culture writer.
But Mr. Musk may be finding his online restrictions. Some of his followers have a hard time getting rid of last week’s stage appearance at the conservative political action conference, reminding them that it’s hard to stay calm when you’re not actually very young. (Kabosu didn’t live to see her inspired memes enter American political life. The 18-year-old Shiba Inu passed away last year.)
“Are there anyone else who feels the atmosphere in TPOT/Tech is changing?” wrote an X user, referring to an online community called “This part of Twitter”, which is mainly composed of tech workers who have historically warmed Mr. Musk. In other words, Mr. Musk is starting to look a little disconnected and increasingly unpopular.
Despite this, Mr. Musk seems to be doubling. His X posts have increased in recent weeks, sometimes hundreds of dollars. And he is still verified by fans.
On Thursday, Mr. Musk posted another meme on his X account, one of dozens of posts he made that morning. Here is a photo of Mel Gibson’s role as Mad Max in “Road Warriors”, an early 1980s action thriller about a shooting gun nomad browsing in a post-apocalyptic world. The meme says in bold lettering: “Ladies, it’s time to start thinking about whether the person you’re going to date has the potential for apocalyptic warlords.” (Movie lovers may notice that Max’s wife and daughter were killed by a cyclist gang in the first “Mad Max” movie.)
A follower answered a picture of a man wearing a Trojan horse helmet and body armor, holding an assault rifle in one hand and a spear in the other. This is one of more than 7,000 replies.
“Yes,” the follower said, adding the flame emoji.
