In the beginning, there was doge. Much laughs, such influence.
When kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato snapped some photos of her Shiba dog, Kabosu, and posted them on , little did she realize that she would help foster one of the decade’s biggest memes. One shot of Kabosu side-eyeing the camera morphed into “doge,” a photo overlaid with words in comic sans font that became a constant presence on social media, before inspiring and .
Besides being one of the most popular memes of the past 10 years, Kabosu’s unlikely turn into internet artifact reflects the big decade animals had in Japan. The web — domestic and international — loves a cuddly critter and ate up stories about them. This diet taught us a lot about how the web worked and evolved over this time, with added kawaii for good measure.
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