Ironic Doge Memes

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About

Ironic Doge Memes are memes that feature the Doge meme in strange or surreal circumstances. Many take the form of image macros and often feature edits to the Doge image for the purposes of dark or absurd humor. Wacky Dog Does an Uncharacteristic Thing is a major subgenre within the ironic trend.

Origin

The original Doge meme is considered to have originated in December 2013. This initial trend included variations of the meme that would now be considered ironic. However, unlike proper "Ironic Doge Memes," this early version does not use techniques such as "liquification" or deep-frying (examples below).

The earliest known usage of the Ironic Doge Meme was posted by iFunny user hiyro, who posted^[10] a photograph of doge with a person burning drugs in a spoon overlaid on the image on June 2nd, 2016 (shown below, left). However, a post made by iFunny^[11] user Paddy on March 26th, 2017, is generally considered to be the starting point of the ironic Doge meta (shown below, right).

Spread

On August 4th, 2017 by Facebook ^[7] account wedummasshitboi. The post features the doge meme distorted using photoshop's liquefaction feature and the caption "Le Toucan has arrived." the post received more than 325 reactions and 85 shares (shown below).

On March 20th, 2018, Reddit user /u/freesmileyde created a post on /r/OutOfTheLoop asking about the origin of the Doge edits, including an Imgur folder of various examples.^[1] On March 21, YouTuber Pewdiepie released an episode of his show Meme Review which looked at examples of the meme.

Throughout, examples of Ironic Doge memes began circulating en masse on the website iFunny.co. For example on October 10th, 2018, iFunny^[8] user illuminant posted an image of a distorted doge with the caption "You have caused me to lose my erection for the final time (shown below, left). Around this time, examples from iFunny were also posted on the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit, to the dismay of users of iFunny, who have accused Redditors from the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit of stealing their work (shown below, right).^[3]^[9]

On April 11th, The Daily Dot ^[2] published an article about the meme's revival, citing both the Reddit thread and Pewdiepie, as well as citing Pewdiepie's fans and Doge's following on Tumblr as possible inspirations.^[2] On August 15th, the subreddit /r/dogelore was created to host Ironic Doge comics.^[4] On December 2nd, the Tumblr account newdoges launched.^[5] Two days later, on December 4th, the Twitter account @dogepoasting was created to post Ironic Doge Memes. In the next month, it gained more than 14.6 thousand followers.^[6]

Sub-Genres

Ironic Doge Memes can be split into various sub-genres.

Wacky Dog Does Uncharacteristic Thing

Wacky Dog Does Uncharacteristic Thing, also known as Doge in Danger refer to memes in which a Doge meme is used to humorously comment on a certain situation or reference a particular event or meme, with Doge replacing an actor within that situation and the caption citing the circumstances of the situation and hinting at the events that are about to unfold.

Liquified Doges

Liquified Doges are Doge memes which feature Doge images which have been modified using Photoshop's Liquify tool to transform Doge into different animals, people, or objects. Many of these memes feature the phrasal template "Le X has arrived", which likely derives from the Le Toucan meme. Liquified Doges are some of the earliest Ironic Doge Memes.

Trapped Doge

Trapped Doge refers to Doge memes which feature Doge trapped within locations, alternate dimensions or objects. The text of these macros often features a statement cursing Doge's wife in the top text and a rude demand to be released from its entrapment in order to see their children in the bottom text.

Dogelore

On August 15th, 2018, Redditor^[1] Kirbizia, founder of popular subreddit /r/okbuddyretard and others, created /r/dogelore. The purpose of the subreddit was to redirect Doge memes dominating the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit at the time to another subreddit in an attempt to diversify /r/obr's content.

Since its creation and in the following years, the /r/dogelore subreddit formed the titular "Doge lore," introducing new dog meme characters, both original and borrowed elsewhere, and establishing certain relationships between them, both non-canon and canon within the Doge lore. Some of the earliest introduced Doge lore characters besides Doge are Walter, Isabelle and Perro.