The Internet meme of the moment goes by the name of “doge” (a whimsical misspelling of “dog”), in which images of the fluffy Shiba Inu breed of dog are overlaid with enthusiastic, if ungrammatical, exclamations—heavy on words like “such,” “much,” “very” and “wow.” The “doge” meme may have already run its course, though, as it has already seeped into the halls of power. Earlier this week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R, Ky.) tweeted, “Much bipartisanship. Very spending. Wow. #doge.”
Politicians appropriating the latest in online slang is nothing new, though. Back in April 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played along with a satirical blog called “Texts from Hillary” by sending her own text to the blog. “Nice selfie,” she wrote, referring to a photo that one of the blog’s creators had taken of himself.
Mrs. Clinton (or rather, whichever young staffer helped her compose that text) was clearly ahead of the pack, as 2013 became the year of the “selfie.” As a slangy term for a cellphone self-portrait, “selfie” originated more than a decade ago in Australia, where the “-ie” diminutive suffix runs rampant. But when even Pope Francis is posing with well-wishers for a “papal selfie,” the word has clearly arrived. President Obama may wish the word never existed: After Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt snapped a casual photo with him at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service, it sparked a mini-controversy dubbed “Selfie-gate.”
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