How Elon Musk has used Internet Slang to marture his army of online fans

In 2010, a woman in Sakura, Japan posted pictures of her well manicure Shiba Inu in her digital journal. The dog, Kabosu, shot his owner with a wide -looking look, a comic image, which quickly jumped from Tumbller to Twitter on Facebook and the rest to the internet.

A lamb legend was born. Someone on reddit called The dog “Dogi,” a fruitless surname that got stuck. Minened a cryptocurrency in the name of another Dogi.

Now, 15 years laterIn the rapid churning of internet culture, Dogge is considered very old. But try to tell that Elon Musk, who has co-taken “Dogi” for the name of his effort to reduce the machinery of the federal government-more formally, the government’s efficiency department.

It is one of the dozens of old-internet almanac who is ripened in its everyday terminology. A brief scroll through the X feed of Mr. Musk, the lamb and the lingo – Dad joked for the very online. they include:

• Frequent references to “420”, a semi-old Slang Term for smoking marijuana stated that Northern was launched at a high school in California. ,

• Regularly, including a regular number “69”, a puppet word for a sex act that has been around at least since Kamasutra. (Mr. Musk, who is 53 years old, is in a hurry to tell that his birthday falls after 4/20 69 days later.)

• Calling things that he supports “epic” or “based”. These are adjectives that are preferred by the frequent users of Reddit and are popular by fans Joss whadanA director, who in the late 1990s, formed the “Bafi the Vampire Slair” television series and directed two of the Avengers films. (Shri Musk has said that he wants to create his chatbot, groc and recently “based” artificial intelligence Tesla told investors He expected the “epic” 2026 for the company.)

Mr. Musk’s slang may seem unfit for those who are not in online culture. But for his fans, the dated sensations of Mr. Musk are a kind of internet comfortable food – and a shared, a node to distressed world arts.

Mr. Musk’s posts are full of the language of war and win the video game. This stuffed language cries a rally for gamers and other people from the very online world of Mr. Musk, which – if they have a general political ideology – look at someone who shares someone who shares the suspicion of his right and he is confident that America has also “awake.” For him, about the online update of Mr. Musk, what is to be more honest than a press release or news conference – or the worst – something – something that they read in the mainstream media. (This is a strategy that remembers Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to indicate authenticity during his first administration.)

A popular, politically progressive online personality in an interview, Hasan Picker Hasan Picker is living in the Revenge of Hasan Picker. “This is the real, real revenge of Nard.”

Mr. Musk did not respond to the remarks request.

Every picture of Mr. Musk surrounds a series, which sees the “Deal in It”Another meme) Represence a victory of NERD culture with which they have long identified. On Wednesday, he wore a T-shirt at the first meeting of President Trump’s new cabinet, stating that “tech support”.

His fans speak him back in his language. They suggest how DOGE can cure the government by destroying its entire classes, often coded in the language of pictures found on the redit. (Contact, A Severely drawn character Message Board is popular on 4chan, a perennial favorite.)

Mr. Musk provoked more than 200 million X followers to help in decisions in online elections. And he listens. The interaction becomes a feedback loop of insider jokes for the billionaire, who once hosted “Saturday Knight Live” and proud of himself. (Mr. Musk sometimes reduces his popularity in the world of comedy. Once he joined the Comedian Dave Chapel on a platform in San Francisco. He was that he was. Shore,

“Anyone can find their community, even if it is a frozen community in 2010,” Brian Feldman, A Internet culture writer Who has long followed Shri Musk’s exploits, said in an interview.

But for people immersed in modern Internet culture, Mr. Musk’s communication style is far from trend. This is especially because the current words such as “no cap” (translation: no lie) or “Loki fail off” (involved in popularity or relevance) are already showing their age. With recent questions about Shri Musk’s better video game skills claims, they see cracks in their superner’s facade.

“More and more people want to accept, they often get stuck in the Internet that they face for the first time,” said Mr. Feldman.

Last week, Shri Musk appeared wearing dark sunglasses, a big gold chain and a T-shirt at a conservative political conference, stating that he was working on “side quasting” (a common practice in spreading the roll-playing games). He quoted from the Hindu Shastra Bhagavad Gita. Robert Open Aimmer said that he was passing through his mind As he first tested the atomic bomb: now, I have died. The destroyer of the world.

“I have become a meme,” Mr. Musk mostly told the silent crowd. “There is a dream living and there is meme living, and it is a lot that is happening.”

Even some of his most enthusiastic followers on X were replaced. One user wrote, “Elon Musk fell from Loki.”

Mr. Musk’s online vocabulary is reminiscent of 2010, when Neerad Culture was ascending. Reddit was a meme factory for favorite favorite Lolcats And icanhazcheesburgerGamers gathered to play games in web forums or to play games to play online rolls and fight through Digital Dungon.

It was only from billionaire to internet celebrity of Mr. Musk’s Metamorphosis. That year, he appeared as herself in the second “Iron Man” film. His online fans ate it.

All this also occurred with the rise of web 2.0, a more social version of the Internet. Twitter – Mr. Musk bought it and changed its name to a town square long ago. Facebook went beyond likes and status updates with “groups”, a feature that allowed people to create their small communities. The chat Forum was filled with 4chan anonymous, often angry online trolls that were tied on pornographic behavior.

While the online groups were present for years, the new social networks were more tightly knit and rewarded the behavior that Mr. Musk is often displayed. The right type of posts can steam and shoot on the Internet.

Provocators moved to aggressive mass movements beyond small scale trolling, such as GumgateA targeted harassment campaign against a female game designer by video games players, who claimed that she represents a lack of morality in sports journalism. It turned into a social movement, which saw diversity, feminism and gamers as extremely progressive values ​​in the film, television, literature and video game industry – an approach that shares Mr. Musk.

Gamergate also indicated that digital performance may lead to real -world changes, for better or worse.

Mr. Musk’s tweeting style turned from the update of the anodine company and turned into more overt trolling. In 2018, he tweeted that he had received a purchase offer for Tesla for a $ 420 stock price. Once, when a competitive car company tried to reduce it at a price, Mr. Musk said that it would drop the cost of its Tesla Model X by $ 69,420.

“Gaunts have been thrown down!” He announced on Twitter. “The prediction is complete.”

Unlike other technical billionaires, who seemed to live a life that regularly lived away from the Internet folk and the rich he got, it was reduced, Mr. Musk was making himself reliable with mems, unabated and tireless postings. And some parts of the online world embraced him.

“Many people find him closed, I think” ColdhellingA pseudo -name Cultural commentator Those who regularly follow Sri Musk and other social movements in an interview online. “But there are many people with whom he resonates, and even if I think it is 10 percent of the maximum population, it is an impressive 10 percent.”

After the commencement of Kovid epidemic in 2020, Shri Musk’s online life was even more bombing. He attacked the Tesla short-selers and the state officials of California, who would not allow him to reopen a Tesla factory. In 2023, he also lived a live-tweet and live-tweeting pictures of driving for Mark Zuckerberg’s house, threatening to wrestle the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook. (At that time, they were around the neck of a real fight match between them. It never happened.)

He played himself the role of Diablo IV such as Eldon Ring, Path of Exile and other video games. One of the world’s wealthiest men was telling gamers that he was one of them.

Mark Korn, an executive of a former video game from Blizard, wrote to X in a post last week that people should not play with gamers. “We are forged with endless boss fight against impossible obstacles. We do not give up. We do not stop. We are the terminators of culture war. ,

“Yes,” Mr. Musk wrote quoting the post.

Those conservatives who do not spend time have also seen the image of Mr. Musk as a series, which they see as a bloated federal government, even though many of them are certainly not certain to be sure what he is trying to say or when he is about to laugh.

Internet Culture Writer Mr. Feldman said, “It is recognized by those who do not know what he is saying, but still it seems that he is speaking to this expert language.”

But Mr. Musk can get his online limits. It was difficult for some of his followers to shake the stage appearance of last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, reminding him that when you are really very young, it is difficult to remain calm. (Kabosu did not live to see the memes motivated to enter American political life. 18 -year -old Shiba Inu died last year.)

“Someone else feels a vib-shift in TPOT/Tech?” An X user wrote, referring to an online community called “part of Twitter”, which is largely made up of technical workers who have historically heated Sri Musk. In other words, Mr. Musk started looking slightly out of touch and rapidly unpopular.

However, Shri Musk feels double. Their posting for X has increased in recent weeks, numbering in hundreds a few days. And he is still being validated by his fans.

On Thursday, Mr. Musk posted another meme in his X account – that morning he one of dozens of positions. It had a picture of Mel Gibson as Mad Max in the “The Road Warrior”, the action thriller about a shotgun-toting nomad in the early 1980s was about navigating a postpocholic world. In bold lettering, Meme said: “Ladies, it is time to start thinking whether the man you are dating, has a postpochiliptic chief into the ability.” (The film Buffers can note that Max’s wife and daughter were killed by a biker gang in the film first “Mad Max”.)

A follower replied with a picture of a man, a trojan helmet in one hand and an attack rifle in one hand wearing a body armor and a spear in the other. It was one of more than 7,000 answers.

“Yes,” the follower said, adding a fire emoji.