On Monday, Twitter changed its on-site logo to an image associated with distressed cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which is based on a decade-old meme: Doge, depicted as a jovial-looking Shiba Inu. It’s an almost too direct example of the site’s recent decentralization since Elon Musk bought it. Since then, Musk has taken a very hands-on approach to running the social media platform.
The change from Twitter Bird to Dogecoin came without any announcement, fanfare or immediate explanation. And it’s starting to look less like a belated April Fool’s joke or whimsy, and more like it could have some staying power. On Monday, just a few hours after changing the Twitter website logo, Musk tweeted a mom about it. He then shared a screenshot of a conversation from March 2022, where user @WSBChairman suggested that Musk change the bird logo to Doge. At the time, Musk replied to the suggestion saying, “Haha that would be sick. [sic]Not long after the logo change, the price of Dogecoin increased by more than 35%, according to Coinbase.
Right now, Doge feels like an ancient meme: It started as online slang for “dog” and was all over Tumblr in the early 2010s. While the meme started out as a format for posting healthy content, it quickly grew into something much more ironic with dark jokes. And in 2013, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created Dogecoin cryptocurrency as a joke. This on-site logo exchange comes at a time when Musk is sued for $258 billionin a lawsuit claiming he ran a pyramid scheme in support of the cryptocurrency.
This is just one of many confusing changes Musk has made to the social media platform. On March 27, Musk tweeted that by April 15, only “verified accounts will be eligible for For You recommendations.” On Monday, many users noticed that their next tab, which was supposed to be limited to accounts users directly subscribed to, suddenly had a bunch of other accounts they weren’t really following. This would be a huge change for Twitter, directing all users to something more akin to the site’s recently added For You page, which uses Twitter’s algorithm to display targeted content, including ads and promoted tweets.
Additionally, Musk said he was going to remove the “old verified” blue ticks, because “the way they were issued was corrupt and nonsensical.” But the checks still haven’t gone away. The process is supposed to be a rollout, but the timetable has not been clarified. On the day the rollout was due to begin, the checkmark description was changed to indicate that accounts are verified out of date or pay for Twitter Blue – with no way to differentiate the two. At the time of writing, it appears that one of the few organizations to have the checkmark removed was The New York Times. This deletion seems to have been directly at Musk’s request.
Musk has been a longtime fan of Dogecoin, tweeting about it regularly in the years since its inception. But Musk’s big public history with the coin begins in 2021, when he became an outspoken public advocate for the cryptocurrency, declaring that a SpaceX mission would be funded with Dogecoin and that the currency would be accepted to buy Tesla merchandise. In fact, Musk’s legal and financial advisor Jared Birchall sits on the board of the Doge Foundation as Musk’s representative. In 2021, when Musk appeared Saturday Night Livehe made a joke about Dogecoin, and the value fell by almost 30%; it fell almost 90% in the few months after.
Promoting Musk’s connection to the coin, in July 2022, during Tesla’s quarterly investor callMusk revealed that the company owned Dogecoin and didn’t sell it like it did its Bitcoin investments — though he didn’t say how much Dogecoin Tesla owns.
Musk himself hasn’t said anything specific about the change beyond tweeting a meme about it. Polygon reached out to Twitter for a statement and received a poop emoji as an automatic reply.