Such Wow: Everything you need to know about the Doge meme

In case you were asleep in your cubicle, this is your friendly reminder that 2013 was the year of the Doge. An unassuming meme that began conquering the deep Internet sometime in the middle of the year, Doge images are, when used correctly, pictures of Shibas bedazzled with an assortment of nouns in rainbow Comic Sans font. "Very want." "Such cake." "Much hug." "Wow."

The fine disciples over at The Verge dish on the unlikely popularity of Doge, its origin, and its persistence in the cultural lexicon, even as stuffy politicians try their damnedest to make it "uncool."

Doge began as a string of seemingly random web phenomena. In October, 2010, the word popped up on Reddit with a popular post of a corgi photo titled "LMBO LOOK @ THIS FUKKIN DOGE." As doge became synonymous with silly dog photos, the meme's multicolored Comic Sans script evolved from the Tumblr Shiba Confessions, which launched in September, 2012 and described its mission as "funny text in Comic Sans over unrelated pictures of Shibas."

Google Trends shows the internet's interest in doge stayed level until July, 2013, when Sato's photo of Kabosu got picked up as the meme's most iconic image. Kabosu's face was erased from her head to make a blank template, replaced by everything from a cat to Nicolas Cage. Crack-smoking Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was turned into a doge ("much crack, such enabler"), and in early December the ultra-conservative Texas Representative Steve Stockman arguably jumped the shark by tweeting an inexpertly doge-ified image of Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn, calling him out for being too liberal ("wow, kill GOP filibuster"). [The Verge]