During your time online, you might have come across the word "copypasta" and wondered what it means. Even more confusing, you might have seen an example of a copypasta without knowing it was one, which can confuse you over what these are all about.
Let's look at what a copypasta is, some examples of them, and how they're used online.
What Is a Copypasta?
Copypasta is a term that refers to blocks of text that get widely copied and pasted around the internet. Typically, these are used on message boards, including sites like Reddit. Early references to copypastas started around 2006 and usage of the term has steadily increased since then.
The word "copypasta" itself is a combination of the words "copy" and "paste". As you likely know, every modern computer and phone has copy and paste functionality, which allows you to take a chunk of text and replicate it somewhere else without manually typing it out again.
Often, a copypasta starts out as an amusing block of text. It might be a viral tweet, weird response to a Reddit thread, or similar. Once it picks up enough exposure and a lot of people learn about it, it can evolve into a copypasta as people start to copy and paste it as a response elsewhere online.
Sometimes, depending on the community, a copypasta can serve to confuse newer people who don't recognize it as copy-and-pasted content. More experienced members might find this funny, as they find people arguing with reused text (sort of like someone trying to have a serious conversation with a soundboard) amusing.
Examples of Copypastas
A lot of copypastas are explicit or overly lengthy, so we won't discuss them here. But there are some clean well-known copypastas that still serve as good illustrations.
One classic example is the following:
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
This quote was originally asked by a 4chan user in a thread discussing a Wii game. Due to its complete incoherence, people had trouble deciphering what it actually meant. It's sometimes used as a copypasta when responding to someone who makes a similarly incomprehensible statement.
Another copypasta meme uses a snippet from an attorney's ad for the disease mesothelioma. The ad advises people that they "may be entitled to financial compensation" if they were diagnosed with the illness. Due to the widespread nature of this commercial on TV and its repetitive nature, people started using it as the punchline to random memes.
One of the best-known examples is the Navy Seal copypasta, which is often used as a response to an insult online. It's a long, expletive-filled paragraph, with words intentionally used incorrectly, that details the speaker's ridiculous accomplishments as a Navy Seal. These include being "trained in gorilla warfare" and being able to kill "in over seven hundred ways . . . just with my bare hands."
If you'd like to find more recent examples of copypastas, check out the /r/copypasta page on Reddit. Just be aware that a lot of them are not family-friendly.
Are Copypastas Spam?
Because of their repetitive nature, you might wonder if copypastas are a form of spam. Most people online don't consider copypastas as a form of spam, since they are deliberately shared by people instead of being mass-delivered by bots.
However, there's a time and a place to use copypastas. While they can be funny in some scenarios, such as a message board where most people are in on the joke, they can also distract from more serious conversations elsewhere.
Compared to other kinds of memes, copypastas get stale quickly because there's no room for originality. So while it's fun to recognize a copypasta and see people who are unfamiliar "fall for it", there's definitely a time and a place to share them.
Copypasta Defined
Now you know what a copypasta is and how they're used online. Learning their origins is often fun, too. And while they can be enjoyable, copypastas can also get old quickly, so using them sparingly is key.
Speaking of which, copypastas make up a lot of the worst kinds of YouTube comments.
Image Credit: Anton Chernov/Shutterstock
