As ubiquitous as the Doge meme may seem in internet circles—and Dogecoin, in crypto circles—the world’s most famous dog has garnered a new level of global attention in recent weeks, courtesy of Elon Musk and the Trump administration.
Even with President Donald Trump generating headlines on an hourly basis, the actions of the Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have dominated the White House’s mainstream media coverage—with the agency making unprecedented slashes to federal programs with breakneck speed and little apparent oversight.
The partisan fervor generated by DOGE’s actions have also taken the legacy of a fluffy Shiba Inu named Kabosu, the subject of the Doge meme, along for the ride.
Please call it the Department of Government Efficiency 🔥😂
— Sir Doge of the Coin ⚔️ (@dogeofficialceo) September 5, 2024
At the behest of a prolific X poster named “Sir Doge of the Coin,” Musk decided in the heat of the 2024 presidential election to name his proposed government agency after Doge, his long-favorite meme. In January, at the start of Trump’s second term, the agency even launched an official website prominently featuring Kabosu’s face—before the image was taken down shortly thereafter.
It’s no surprise that people have very different, and likely very strong, thoughts about the Department of Government Efficiency’s agenda. But how do leaders in the Doge community—who generally treat the meme as an all-encompassing lifestyle and philosophy—feel about their new interconnection with the Trump administration?
Doge community members who spoke with Decrypt for this story expressed a full spectrum of views on the subject, ranging from firm neutrality to enthusiasm, to concern that partisan politics might soon disintegrate the fragile bonds that have propelled the Doge movement to such a unique place in internet history.
Gary Lachance, a longtime Doge adherent who organized the first Dogecoin gathering at Burning Man in 2014 and later co-founded the Dogecoin Foundation, told Decrypt that he sees the dog-themed meme as the very example of a purely positive online movement that’s never faltered from a strong ethos of inclusivity.
“It’s stood the test of time as this very wholesome, inclusive, fun entity that just unifies people,” Lachance told Decrypt. “I’ve been amazed at how well the meme has held up. It hasn’t slipped into any real territory that was political or divisive.”
Lachance, who self-defines as a “liberty maximalist,” supports the Department of Government Efficiency’s mission to check government power. But even still, he worries that the Doge meme’s affiliation with a controversial political project could do more harm than good.
“The philosophy of Doge is ‘Do Only Good Everyday,” he said. “But in politics you can’t do only good, because basically every decision that’s made, some people will suffer because of it.”
Some of Lachance’s happiest Doge-related memories include driving across the country with his partner in a McLaren wrapped with hundreds of wide-eyed Doge faces. Everywhere they drove, Lachance said, people of all backgrounds would smile, laugh, and enthusiastically engage with the couple.
“When people see that face, they get happy,” he reminisced.
Lachance is now concerned, though, that partisan politics could threaten that association. The DJ and musician is currently writing a treatise, titled “Separation of Doge and State,” which will implore Elon Musk to publicly clarify that the DOGE and Doge meme are two separate entities.
Many Doge community members sympathetic to the MAGA movement, on the other hand, have zero reservations about the two concepts co-mingling.
Curious Doge, a pseudonymous X user who writes a Dogecoin-focused newsletter, told Decrypt that he sees the Department’s political agenda as a natural evolution of Doge’s populist and decentralization-minded philosophy. Musk’s consultations with X users about the agency’s direction and aims appears to be a particular cause for excitement.
I will never get tired of everyone saying Doge all day long
— Curious Doge (@curious_doge_) February 7, 2025
“It’s like millions of people are using the internet as a tool to project their collective will into the previously unreachable halls of IRL power, reshaping the U.S. government and by extension the entire world,” Curious Doge said. “It’s very exciting.”
Even he, though, concedes that not everyone shares his enthusiasm for the Trump administration, or for DOGE’s myriad job and spending cuts. But he’s confident that people will come around, when, he hopes, the federal government soon becomes much “nimbler and more responsive” as a result.
Plus, he added, isn’t the internet all about letting people do their own thing?
“Part of decentralization and internet culture is that individuals or groups can use the same cultural material for different purposes,” he said.
Though Dogeworld—true to its decentralized ethos—is primarily an informal grouping of independent internet users, it does feature some bureaucracy. Own The Doge, a collective of Doge lovers who now own the exclusive license to the meme’s IP that’s governed via a DAO structure, issues a cryptocurrency called DOG that holders can use to vote on various community initiatives.
John Monarch, the man who first birthed the Doge meme in 2010 by posting a photo of Kabosu to Reddit, is an active Own The Doge community member. He’s currently taking the long view of things—that whatever current political winds may bring, they will eventually blow over.
“Pepe moved past its controversy,” Monarch told Decrypt, referencing the popular meme that was for a time co-opted by white supremacists in the alt-right movement. “We’re pretty confident that despite some controversy or hard feelings right now, Doge is going to either stay apolitical or return to being apolitical.”
For the meantime, though, Own The Doge isn’t getting involved. The group’s pseudonymous CEO, Smoke, told Decrypt that unless a majority of DAO members vote to take some sort of action—like issuing a statement supporting or denouncing Musk’s usage of the Doge meme in official government business—the group is rising above the fray.
The only exception to that policy would be if the owner of the late Kabosu—Atsuko Sato, a Japanese woman based outside of Tokyo—felt strongly about the subject and wanted the organization to intervene on her behalf.
“That would be the ultimate and final say,” Smoke said. “Atsuko is the guiding light of the DAO.”
Smoke and Monarch do talk to Sato on a “very regular basis,” but said that the Department of Government Efficiency hasn’t come up once in those conversations.
“She doesn’t speak English, she’s a kindergarten teacher,” Monarch said. “She doesn’t really focus on this type of stuff.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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Source: https://decrypt.co/308825/what-dogecoin-community-thinks-elon-musk-doge
