The United States is in a strange mood, after the fame of the word Doge , which is no longer just a four-letter word but a four-letter government agency in the United States, as the incoming US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the formation of DOGE, a government agency headed by tech mogul Elon Musk and his MAGA brother Vivek Ramaswamy. The full name of DOGE - Department of Government Efficiency - indicates its purpose: to run the US government with the same efficiency and ruthlessness we see in agile technology companies.
DOGE NATURE
We don’t yet know whether DOGE will be an official agency or an unofficial one, like party committees in some countries, but what we can imagine is that it will be a powerful tool for Elon Musk, the bigwig behind the MAGA machine that won Donald Trump. It’s possible that Musk will do to the US government what he did to Twitter, known as X, when he bought it: fire about 70 percent of the staff.
At least, that’s the impression many got from Donald Trump’s DOGE statement. “These two great Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, cut redundant regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies — essential to the Save America movement,” Trump said. Musk added his own bit to the official announcement, saying, “DOGE will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people.”
DOGE History
Of course, a few years ago Doug was just a cute, meme-worthy puppy, a picture of a Shiba Inu — a dog named Kabusu from Japan — looking playful and confused, and when he appeared in memes, he was accompanied by two-word phrases — one of which was often “much,” “much,” and “much.”
The Doge meme has been so popular in the last ten years, it’s become part of common parlance, and it’s popped up in all sorts of places – serious, funny, and no wonder! Everyone loves puppies and some people are crazy about them, like John Wick, Vladimir Putin, and maybe Elon Musk.
Musk , the world's richest man, has always been interested in memes, like many others in the tech world who know the communities and culture of Reddit, 4Chan, and 9Gag, and he has always been interested in memes that can seem silly, and sometimes even corny .
Doge has been Musk's favorite when it comes to memes, so much so that a few years ago he embraced DogeCoin, a cryptocurrency that was launched as a joke in 2013. Since then, Musk has often posted memes and tweets with DogeCoin as the subject, giving it his stamp of approval and helping its value soar.
Although DogeCoin is a meme cryptocurrency, its market cap is currently over $55 billion, because people know that Elon Musk loves the word Doge, in the past month, especially after the US election, its value has risen by 240 percent.
The Many Faces of Doge
The Shiba Inu puppy's use goes beyond DogeCoin and Doge memes, because of how popular and recognizable it is - and obviously so cute - Doge has found a place on stickers, buttons, logos, seals, stamps, on t-shirts, bags, even in logos, and of course, in much of what Elon Musk does.
Doge as a government agency isn’t an entirely new idea. Months ago, even at a time when there was no guarantee that Trump would win, Elon Musk began talking about a Department of Government Efficiency. The name was chosen, as it often does, because it flies in the face of normal norms and sensibilities.
Elon Musk's idea was to have fun, like "let this sink in" when he walked into Twitter's headquarters carrying a sink, but as is often the case nowadays, what Musk considers a joke — say, buying Twitter — often ends up becoming reality a few months later.
This has now happened to Doug, who was once also a joke and a cute dog, but the officials and bureaucrats in the US government who will soon face this issue will likely not find it funny.