Musk, DOGE and the world’s first meme government

Will a federal system, upon which millions rely, cope with Musk's stunts?

Elon Musk via AP/ Alamy

In April 2023, a few months after Elon Musk first bought Twitter, one of the first changes he made seemed deliberately designed to annoy the maximum number of people. The company logo at the top of the page had always been the much-loved blue Twitter bird. Musk, however, was in the process of changing everything to reflect the branding of his overarching company of companies, X. Yet that wasn’t enough. Encouraged by fanboys, Musk thought it would be funny to change – at least temporarily – the masthead logo to that of the bitcoin he’d been championing for years. 

The so-called “Dogecoin” was originally conceived as a joke, mocking the nature of the emerging Bitcoin market. Now considered the first “meme coin” (one that spreads like a cultural idea rather than a sound investment opportunity), the coin is represented by the image of a dog called Kabosu, a Shiba Inu that had been the face of the original “doge meme”. 

I hope you’re following. This really does go nowhere.