现实生活中的 18 岁总督：要去月球的模因

“我第一次发布了 Doge”，约翰·莫纳克 (John Monarch) 随意地提到，就在我偷偷溜进东京酒店的自助早餐时坐在他的餐桌旁几分钟后。

打扰一下？是的，显然我正坐在最初的 Doge meme 的创造者旁边，我们正准备登上巴士去参加 Doge 背后的现实狗 Kabosu 的 18 岁生日派对。

Kabosu：现实生活中的总督

Kabosu住在千叶县佐仓市，距离东京成田机场不远。 2008 年，当她的饲养员倒闭时，她和其他 19 只柴犬被带到动物收容所接受安乐死。然而，她被当地幼儿园老师佐藤敦子（Atsuko Sato）（她在 X 上的 67,000 名粉丝更熟悉的名字为“@kabosumama”）救了出来，由于她的圆脸，佐藤以柑橘类水果的名字为她命名。

Kabosu喜欢在放松的时候一直做出这个表情，Atsuko回答了生日人群的问题。

在 2020 年罕见地接受 KnowYourMeme 采访时，Atsuko 回忆道，她之所以联系收容所，是因为我失去上一只狗已经过去两年了，我想再次与狗一起生活。大多数卡博苏斯兄弟姐妹就没那么幸运了。

杂志作者 Elias Ahonen 在 Doge 18 岁生日那天飞去看望她。另一个模因“坏运气布莱恩”（Bad Luck Brian）可以在背景中看到。

十五年后，2023 年 11 月 2 日，在她的聚会上，她很幸运仍然和我们在一起。 18岁相当于狗年的90岁，这是一个令人印象深刻的壮举。

当佐仓市长兴奋地向聚集在荷兰风格风车周围的人群发表讲话时，卡博苏斯婴儿车被推向舞台，让围观者感到高兴。今天是她 18 岁生日（大概是这样），敦子决定在她三岁的时候被收养。宣读国庆日历代表的声明：从此，11月2日为国际总督日。

“我记得她在房间的角落里用洋娃娃般的眼睛盯着我，”敦子抱着她回忆道。

Kabosu 是 DOGE，每天只做善事，正如 Atsuko 所说，多年来，她甚至没有听说过这个词。

狗狗币的崛起：从迷因到加密现象

今日狗的故事开始于 2010 年，当时 23 岁的 Monarch 在北卡罗来纳州偶然发现了一张匿名狗坐在沙发上做鬼脸的照片。这张照片最初是 Atsuko 的丈夫当年早些时候拍摄并发布在她的博客上的八张系列照片中的一张。约翰在 Reddit 上发布了这张图片，标题为 LMBO LOOK @ THIS FUKKIN DOGE。 “总督”这个词本身已经被使用，尽管很晦涩。

你发了一个愚蠢的帖子，别指望它能做任何 300 个赞的事情，没那么严重。

It spread slowly, at some point picking up a comic sans theme and eventually getting its own subreddit, r/doge, in early 2013. Images of different Shiba Inu dogs were presented in a similar format, and text in Doge speak like much wow saw it named Know Your Memes top meme of that year. At that point, it was everywhere, with a late 2013 Huffington Post article complaining that the beloved internet meme was being ruined by uncool Republican members of U.S. Congress using it incorrectly.

A decade on, doge reigns strong. It has recently also become associated as a mascot of another meme, NAFO, which is described as a meme and social media movement dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Doge McLaren. (Twitter @dogeclaren)

On the bus to Chiba, I ask some of the birthday party organizers and attendees what Doge means to them and what it stands for. To me, Doge is that spark of magic, a noble mission of spreading joy, explains Gary Lachance, a big fan of the doge meme, who once drove a McLaren wrapped in Doge faces across the United States. He sees it as a wholesome counterweight to the dark and toxic places that exist on the internet.

Along with doge-loving hippy hacker Griff Green, Lachance previously worked to bring a doge-themed art car Disco Doge to Burning Man.

Bad Luck Brian. (Reddit)

Silliness and whimsy, says another, because the world is too serious. Doge means love! another pipes in with confidence. For some, this is a pilgrimage.

Others look at the crypto angle, with local doge fan and birthday attendee Kaneko Otanel saying, Doge is a starting point for those unfamiliar with crypto, especially in Japan.

Then I got to ask a meme himself: Tay Zonday, known for his 2007 Chocolate Rain song video, which 4chan helped make viral.

Im a meme, Bad Luck Brian is a meme, Doge is a meme, he stated matter-of-factly, referring to meme colleague Kyle Craven, who was also present at this meme gathering.

I believe blockchain has the potential to save us from the worst outcome of social media.

Elon Musk and the celebrity influence on Dogecoins popularity

A 2014 brass coin produced by Shibemint to commemorate the Dogecar. Crypto Imperator also produced brass, silver and gold coins embedded with private keys to 10,000, 100,000 and 1 million Dogecoin, respectively. (Shibemint)

Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launched their joke cryptocurrency that no one would take seriously on December 6, 2013. And they picked doge as their mascot.

Despite the founders exit, the Dogecoin community has banded together to crowdfund some memorable projects.

In January 2014, they made headlines after raising money to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Olympics, inspired by the movie Cool Runnings.

Later that year, 100 million DOGE was collected to sponsor Nascar driver Josh Wises car #98, which came to be known as the Dogecar. The car is playable in the Nascar 14 video game.

Fun and social, Dogecoin has also seen success as a tipping currency on online forums like Reddit.

So I just bought my Twitter handle for $DOGE #dogecoin #doge from a guy who shares my last name. in a decade his kid will get a mysterious paper wallet from a "distant relative" https://t.co/QKxKWjlcxC

— Elias Ahonen.eth (@eahonen) February 15, 2021

In mid-2020, when coins cost a quarter of a penny, a viral TikTok trend promoted the idea of DOGE eventually going to the moon and reaching a $1 valuation. Not long after, a known spaceman named Elon Musk jumped onto the doge train in December 2020, writing a short tweet: One word: Doge.

pic.twitter.com/fWhEwV5uYH

— beeple (@beeple) February 8, 2021

In January 2021, Dogecoin became connected with the meme-stock community surrounding the GameStop short squeeze and gained nearly 1,000% in a two-week period. The rise to $0.07 was in part fueled by a barrage of tweets from Musk, including a play on the Vogue magazine as DOGUE.

In May, Musk held a Twitter poll asking if Tesla should accept DOGE (78% agreed), soon announcing that the car company was selling merchandise for DOGE, and SpaceX would soon follow.

Then came the announcement on April 1 April Fools Day that a literal Dogecoin was going to the literal moon aboard a SpaceX rocket, and the price soon quadrupled into the $0.25 range.

SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2021

Doge-1 to the moon: Will Dogecoin moon, too?

The next month, on May 9, Dogecoin reached its all-time high of around $0.70. On that day, Canadian technology company Geometric Energy Corporation announced it would launch Doge-1, a CubeSat fully funded by Dogecoin, into lunar orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

According to Musk, founder of SpaceX, it would become both the first crypto and the first meme in space. (However, a physical Bitcoin was sent into space on the Peregrine lunar lander last month. This developed problems shortly after takeoff and never made it to the moon.)

The @maverick_space integration facility in California has processed the @Moxyio satellite owned/operated by @GeometricEnergy (designed/built by @ExoboticsUK) for https://t.co/fZiGiyvuEG on the Geometric-1 Mission to Earth OrbitMOXY is now on the way to Cape Canaveral, Florida! pic.twitter.com/5BOkun2ayl

— Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) (@GeometricEnergy) November 28, 2022

The Doge-1 probe will feature a camera livestreaming a screen, and users can put up messages and pictures by controlling pixels via tokens. There will be five tokens available: two for location (Beta for the X coordinate and Rho for the Y coordinate), two for pixel control (Gamma for the brightness and Kappa for the color), and XI for time meaning, how long the advertisement will be displayed, according to Space.com.

There might be companies which want to depict their logo or it might end up being a bit more personal and artistic, the companys CEO, Samuel Reid, told Business Insider.

One noted critic of the mission has been Dogecoin co-founder Jackson Palmer, already known for taking a harsh tone regarding the industry and for accusing Musk of peddling pyramid schemes. Billy Markus, the other co-founder, is known as Shibetoshi and famously sold all his Dogecoins in 2015 when prices hovered around $0.0001, netting about enough in total to buy a used Honda Civic. Doge peaked at around $0.70 in 2021. Though hes no longer attached, he observes that its weird that something I made in a few hours is now part of internet culture.

Is there anyone in this space more butthurt than Jackson Palmer? pic.twitter.com/DmWBDTrDk9

— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) July 14, 2021

A $258-billion class-action suit was brought against Musk by investors who alleged that he had engaged in a crypto pyramid scheme involving Dogecoin, stating that this is a securities fraud class action arising from a deliberate course of carnival barking market manipulation and insider trading.

Real life Doge more than a meme

Despite the commotion around Dogecoin, Kabosu has led a quiet life in Sakura with Atsuko and her family, which included three cats to whom she is like a big sister. The doge meme isnt that widespread in Japan; however, Kabosu is still a minor celebrity, with Atsukos pet blog being among the most popular in the country.

Around me, nobody knows about the Doge meme. Maybe I dont understand memes very well, because Im living such an analog life, Atsuko told The Verge in late 2013, adding that she had become aware of risks related to the personal information she shares publicly.

10 years on, her distance remains. For all but a handful of visits and encounters, Kabosu has lived a life removed from the meme and token she inspired.

Im not too familiar with cryptocurrency, but seeing my beautiful dogs face on the internet is heartwarming.

This was apparent at Kabosus birthday party, where Dogecoin the cryptocurrency seemed little more than a tacked-on addition to a community celebration for a beloved dog. I came to this event because I read about it on Atsukos blog I had no idea it was related to crypto, mentions Lauren, an English teacher from Canada who in one-to-a-billion odds recognized me as a high school classmate from half a world and lifetime away. Doge magic, they called it.

Dogecoin DAOs and community: Charities and social impact

In 2021, with some outside help, Atsuko minted the famous image as an NFT, and PleasrDAO purchased it at auction for 1,696.9 ETH, or $4 million. The original couch that Kabosu was pictured on was also sold with the anonymous buyer taking delivery at Twitter (now X) headquarters, a source involved with the sale tells me. Donating much of the NFT proceeds to charity some of whose representatives attended the birthday Atsuko said she believed Kabosu had been given a special mission by the universe.

During the past decade the meme had been on its own story Atsuko was doing her own thing, and never profited from Kabosu as she is not crypto native or a meme-r.

I think nobody really drew a line back to Atsuko and Kabosu, despite other dog-coins like Shiba taking off, says Tridog, a member of PleasrDAO and now also the top dog at Own The Doge. He describes the latter as a culture DAO of Doge that aims to proliferate the Doge meme mainly through real-world positive impact. He recalls someone at the Ethereum Foundation drawing the line back to Atsuko, who in October 2019 brought Kabosu to a Devcon 5 event in Osaka.

PleasrDAO fractionalized ownership of the NFT across 16,969,696,969 DOG tokens, allowing anyone to purchase a share of the image with the possibility of dog-parking, a take on staking, to claim ownership of a specific pixel of the image. PleasrDAO sold 25% in a presale, with plans for 20% to be distributed via airdrops and 24% going to Own The Doge. Theyre going to give Atsuko 1%, too! says CryptoPathic, an involved influencer who previously led the fractionalization of another of the original Kabosu images, known as Feisty Doge, into Non-Fungible Doge NFD tokens.

Read also Features WTF happened in 1971 (and why the f**k it matters so much right now) Features Crypto scoring big with European football Doge, Shiba Inu and other dog tokens

Kabosu is not the only famous meme dog in the Shiba Inu breed. Cheems Baltze, also known as Ball Ball, was a contemporary of Kabosu, appearing in the bonk and the Swole Doge vs. Cheems memes, the latter of which features a giant muscular Kabosu and a sedate Baltze. Baltze lived in Hong Kong and passed away in August 2023 at the age of 15.

Swole Doge vs. Cheems. RIP, Cheems. (Ruinmyweek.com)

There are also more than a few kennels worth of dog coins. On a CoinMarketCap listing of memecoins, dogs dominate, with Shiba Inu (SHIB) holding a respectable or absurd, depending on who you ask $5-billion valuation and the Cheems-inspired BONK sitting near $1 billion. Dogwifhat (WIF) is a Solana token and the new talk of the town. Theres also Dogelon Mars because, of course, there would be.

Of the top 11 memecoins by market cap, eight are dogs. (coinmarketcap.com) The future of Dogecoin

Kabosu 于 2022 年底被诊断出患有白血病，他不再吃固体食物，也无法在没有定制轮椅的情况下独立走动。尽管她看上去很平静，但她很困，几乎无法在无人帮助的情况下抬起头，这让人怀疑她的生活质量是否值得为之奋斗。她大部分时间都在敦子工作的幼儿园休息。在生日庆典上，敦子告诉观众，你们的爱多次拯救了卡博苏斯的生命，感谢粉丝们的爱和支持，让她活到了晚年。

揭幕仪式后，敦子和佐仓市市长与 Kabosu 及其雕像合影。最初的沙发被卖给了 Twitter 总部的某人。 （Soranews24.com）

很多模因也都失败了，很多社区也是如此，但不知何故，Kabosu 和总督只是从博客扩展到狗狗币、NFT，现在是 DAO，总有一天，火炬可能会传承下去。特里多格指出，我们只是在传播微笑。

接下来，无论怎样，卡波苏现在已经成为樱花永久的一部分，通过新揭幕的她的青铜雕像，两侧是三只猫，坐在她被拍到的著名照片的沙发上。该项目由 Own The Doge 驻澳大利亚项目经理 SaladPingers 领导。 Doge 是关于各种背景的人们聚集在一起庆祝一只有趣、可爱的狗。它愚蠢、有益健康、平易近人，对现实世界的影响总是行善和捐助慈善事业。

这座雕像主要是用狗狗币支付的，这让敦子明显感动了。

我们收到了一份很棒的礼物，一尊卡博苏雕像。我相信卡博苏会永远在这里看到美丽的日落。

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