From Meme to Coin to Government Body: DOGE, a Case of Cruel Irony in Contemporary Politics

Abstract This article traces the cultural biography of the Doge meme – from a trivial Internet meme to a meme coin and the acronym of an unofficial U.S. government body, the Department of Government Efficiency – to show how irony emerges and operates in contemporary politics. It argues that DOGE is cruelly ironic in the way its trajectory exemplifies the co-optation of collectively produced vernacular signifiers by financial and political discourses, revealing the deep entanglement of capital and political power in platform capitalism. At the same time, the article reads the DOGE trajectory as representative of a top-down memeification of politics and governance, in which memes and vernacular aesthetics migrate into institutional identity and into the relation between institutions and citizens to obscure damaging politics. In the case of DOGE, an ironic dissonance emerges between the playful memetic signifiers used in the department’s identity design and the gravity of its austerity-driven agenda. This dissonance is cruel in its effects: it generates ambiguity, dilutes institutional accountability, and creates an illusion of populist transparency while the department’s opaque operations have harmful material consequences for American bureaucracy and democracy. This cruel irony further interpellates citizens to take part in memetic humor and unseriousness while hiding that they are the victims of this humor: its delegitimizing effects on governance ultimately harm supporters and critics alike.