Memes run the internet. Whether it’s a bleary-eyed cat with Comic Sans font or a cartoon dog in a burning home, just looking at a single image is enough to convey the deepest emotions tied to the human condition. Once these images hit peak vitality, they are no longer solely owned by their creators.
Memes also belong to the Facebook Boomers and avocado toast Millenials on Instagram who share them. It’s up to the human mind on the web to decide their meaning. Over time, these memes start to evolve and mutate. They often rot into a form that is sometimes unrecognizable from what they were just a few years back.
Doge Takes on a Musk
We all remember the face of Kabosu, the Shiba Inu photographed in 2010, which became the face of Doge. In its original form, the Doge was a way to express pure content. Captions like “much wow” become catchphrases for us old enough to remember what Facebook looked like before the AI slop came to town.
The same jokey vibe that birthed the meme also gave us Dogecoin, a “parody” currency co-created by Billy Markus.
Markus told Business Insider in 2021 that meme coins were “silly.” Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that often have no purpose beyond tricking investors into thinking they have value. Considering how many were coming out, he thought they were “probably easy to make.”
But during that post-pandemic meme-coin boom, Dogecoin became a valuable asset. Its price surged on the back of the meme Grim Reaper himself, Elon Musk. The technocrat constantly spams outdated memes on his Twitter/X profile. Dogecoin was one of the unlucky assets he decided to push.
When Trump took over as president, he brought on Musk as a “special government employee.” Musk has already started dismantling government programs alongside our trust in the political process under the Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE). The doggy and crypto meme has now been co-opted, with its name grossing out many who were still “HODLing” their digital currency.
The Dogecoin subreddit, with over 2.6 million members, is packed with people who are angry at Musk for ruining the joke. “When Elon first got involved, I was excited. Over the past couple years that excitement has turned sour,” one Redditor posted. “Is Elon still a god here?” wrote another.
Trisha Paytas Live on Broadway
But that meme rot isn’t always a bad thing; sometimes, it delivers a delicious kombucha that ends up in a Broadway musical. Trisha Paytas got her start on YouTube in 2006. She went viral as a ditzy blonde troll asking if dogs had brains and sharing she’d be voting for Mitt Romney because she found him attractive.
Zoom forward nearly two decades, and Paytas has had more lore than most of the best-selling fantasy series. She’s been a drug addict, storyteller, podcaster, daily poster, and influencer with millions of fans. She has two kids with her husband, who is the brother of the husband of her former podcast host. Her fans are just as loud as her haters, giving her enough juice to put on her own Broadway show.
On Monday, she premiered “Trisha’s Broadway Debut” which she told Today.com was a “perfect blend of everything.” If you couldn’t afford the $400 tickets, you could also purchase a live stream to watch the event online.
Your ticket lets you see her belt-out show tunes alongside traditional celebrities like Rachel Ziegler (who I’m unsure knows Paytas’ full lore). Paytas would never have gone from a manic depressive screaming on her kitchen floor to the hallowed ground of Broadway without those early memes.
And as the years go on, more memes will rot and evolve. Our nature is to constantly find new shiny things to keep our attention. Now, five minutes of fame can last a lifetime. Decades ago, Skibbidi Toilet would have been a joke on Newgrounds. Today, it’s turning into a theatrical movie.
