Canto VII: The Mortal Chosen
Elon Musk discovers Dogecoin and the entire pantheon pays attention
On 2 April 2019, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and SpaceX’s founder, publicly expressed his fondness for Dogecoin. Attention from such a prominent figure widened the meme’s reach. Dionysus recognized another entrance to the celebration.
Why Elon? His public reach combined technology, spectacle and internet humor, carrying Dogecoin messages across different audiences. It was no economic coronation: attracting attention and sustaining a network’s value remained different things.
Between 2019 and 2020, Musk’s public interactions with the meme strengthened that association. Buying Twitter and temporarily changing its symbol still lay ahead, in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Here, Dionysus was only discovering a new amplifier for his laughter.
Between 2019 and 2020, Musk mentioned Dogecoin periodically. Each mention moved the price. The community that had slept for years would awaken temporarily, celebrate, and return to torpor. But something had changed: Dogecoin now had a mortal herald of unprecedented amplitude in human history. When Dionysus chooses his bearer, he chooses someone with the audience for the cult that comes next.
The thyrsus, the staff of Dionysus, was simple: a fennel stalk topped with a pinecone, wrapped in ivy and vines. An unlikely object as a symbol of divine power. Elon Musk posting about a meme dog was equally unlikely as a vehicle for market transformation. It is precisely that improbability that characterizes Dionysus's intervention: he uses the instrument no one would expect.
Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It's pretty cool.