Rescued from a dog shelter, Kabosu was an enduring meme of the 2010s, her skeptical glance inspiring a new type of online lingo and a cryptocurrency.
Story here.
In dogespeak: Much sad. Soul. Very doge.
Kabosu was among a pack of 19 Shiba Inus sent to a Japanese dog shelter after the shutdown of a puppy mill, according to Sato. Most of the puppies were killed, but Kabosu was rescued. Sato, a pet-loving kindergarten teacher, adopted Kabosu in 2008 and promptly began posting cute photos of her pets to her blog...
Kabosu’s increasingly recognizable face was being photoshopped onto images of Twinkies, bread loafs, a stack of Pringles and cartoon buff beach bodies and peppered with stream-of-conscious-like words, usually misspelled...
By 2013, even members of Congress were getting in on the doge meme — a sure sign the internet zaniness had jumped the shark. But the doge meme didn’t die, it transcended: Kabosu’s face this time inspired the cryptocurrency dogecoin. In 2021, dogecoin enjoyed a brief 800 percent surge when, boosted by a Reddit thread, it became a popular memestock like GameStop and AMC and had prominent supporters including Elon Musk, whose Tesla and SpaceX accept the currency...
According to the Verge, Kabosu’s fame was never leveraged for lucrative sponsorships and branding deals like Boo the Pomeranian, Grumpy Cat and other internet-famous animals. Sato at the time said she wanted Kabosu’s fame to boost awareness of about animal shelters and puppy mills like the one Kabosu came from...