By now you’ve probably heard the news that the Dogecoin dog and Internet legend Kabosu, a Shiba Inu, has passed away at the age of 18. If you haven’t heard, give yourself a second. We had to. So RIP, Kabosu. Much Sad. At least we have her lovable memes as a fitting remembrance. Let’s count down the best ones.
Kabosu’s owner, Atsuko Sato, shared the news of the dog’s passing on social media, saying that the famous canine died without suffering, and as Sato was petting her. Like most things that get popular on the Internet, the Doge movement came about quite by accident. Sato was a kindergarten teacher who adopted Kabosu in 2008 from a litter of Shiba Inus at the pound after a breeder went out of business.
She posted one photo in particular that caught a lot of attention. It was the dog looking happy, naughty and knowledgeable all at once. This gave way to memes that wrote text with comic sans in two word phrases like “Much hunger” and “So scary.” From there, it was pretty much everywhere, and got even more iconic when Kabosu became the visual for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency originally started as a joke that made some people rich when it exploded in value in 2021.
#10 – So Scare
How can you say anything negative about that face? Much cute, so scare!
#9 – When Dogecoin blew up
What’s crazy about Dogecoin is that it was absolutely created as a joke and as a way to satirize so-called legitimate cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It was officially launched in 2013 and in a month the website had over a million visitors. With some help from Reddit, Dogecoin because the seventh largest cryptocurrency in the world.
In the summer of 2019, the coin was finally listed on crypto exchange Binance. In January of 2021, Dogecoin shot up 800% in a day. It was a happenstance of circumstances that involved Elon Musk and other celebrities tweeting about it. Eventually, it fell back down to Earth, but not before making a lot of people rich in the process.
#8 – Doge Vader
Everything good has an equal amount of bad to it. Doge Vader is the inverse doge. Doge Vader is evil, wants to steal from you, and never puts the toilet seat down. Doge Vader is also symbolic of what happened after the Dogecoin crash. Was Dogecoin evil all along? It’s definitely a sobering thought.
#7 – Doge as food
It started as bread and from there morphed into all kinds of tasty treats. In this particular example, we get a sort of twinkie-like sponge cake with a doge head on it. It still uses the same comic sans approach to the meme, but instead of doge being concerned, she’s more talking about how “delishus” the cake is.
#6 – The Joseph Ducreux Meme mashup
Not content with simply being a cloud or cake, doge started jumping up in other memes, creating a mishmash that took the best of both and brought them to a new place.
#5 – The Infinite Doge
There’s a popular meme format known as infinite zoom, where an image appears to be zooming in but is simply repeating itself over and over again. Of course doge got in on this. It really is mesmerizing.
#4 – The Nicolas Cage connection
After simply putting doge face on things, someone came up with a different idea: what if we put a face on Doge? This is how you get Nicolas Cage doge, apparently from the National Treasure timeline.
#3 – Award Winning Doge
Look at that happy doge! Fresh from winning an award but still hating touch, this proud doge deserves every accolade in the world. How can something be so cute and so fancy at the same time?
#2 – Dogeball
Not really much to say here. Just a bunch of doge hanging out getting ready to play the most important sport on the Internet: Dogeball. Sometimes it’s the simple ones that work the best.
#1 – The Original Wow
This is the image that started it all. How can you look at that face and not be entranced by the sheer magnificence of this beautiful, yet cautious animal. She’s not into being touched, and her interior dialogue is afire with warnings. So grief.