Copypasta

A copypasta is a block of text that is copied and pasted across a system or application which the intention of being provided a result by a human or machine. It is modernly used to establish a social topic, which is a reference of the copypasta itself.

History

The word "copypasta" was first used on Usenet groups in 2006.

Etymology

The term "copypasta" is derived from the computer term "copy/paste", and can be traced back to an anonymous 4chan thread from 2006.

Examples

Navy Seal

The Navy Seal copypasta, also sometimes known as Gorilla Warfare per a misspelling of "guerrilla warfare in its contents", is an aggressive but humorous attack paragraph supposedly written by an extremely well-trained member of the United States Navy SEALs (hence its name) to an unidentified "kiddo", ostensibly whoever the copypasta is directed to. Written in a manner similar to a non-serious death threat, the copypasta has the author threaten the recipient while boasting of their own increasingly absurd or unfeasible accomplishments, such as having "over 300 confirmed kills" or being able to kill someone "in over seven hundred ways, and thats just with my bare hands". This copypasta is often reposted as a humorous overreaction to an insult and is thought to have originated on the military-themed imageboard OperatorChan, in a post dated 11 November 2010.

This copypasta is in the manifesto of the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

Bee Movie

Further information: Bee Movie § Legacy

The Bee Movie copypasta, often called the Bee Movie script per its contents, is the entire screenplay of the 2007 animated film Bee Movie, though this is sometimes shortened to just the introductory monologue ("According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible."). Use of the Bee Movie's script as a copypasta began in 2013, when users posted it onto websites such as Reddit and Tumblr, and it was popularized when edits of the film were first uploaded to YouTube in late 2016.

"A Drive Into Deep Left Field by Castellanos"

Main article: A drive into deep left field by Castellanos

"A drive into deep left field by Castellanos" is a quote from Thom Brennaman, an American sports commentator for the Major League Baseball team the Cincinnati Reds. The quote and copypasta originated during a broadcast of a game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Kansas City Royals on 19 August 2020, when Brennaman uttered a homophobic slur on a hot mic. When he was apologizing later in the broadcast, Reds player Nick Castellanos hit a home run, prompting Brennaman to deliver a play-by-play in the middle of his apology, saying: "I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith, as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame." ESPN's Pablo Torre later remarked that it "was like listening to the band play on as the Titanic was sinking. Except the band was also somehow the iceberg."

Technology

Copypasta can refer to a piece of code that was copy/pasted. Discussions of copypasta can be found in the code history of Linux, e.g.: "This very much looks like copypasta" (this looks like copy/pasted code and was not originally authored) and "Copypasta mistake" (this code was copy/pasted and not correctly amended).

See also

• Creepypasta, brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare readers
• Chain letter
• Faxlore, similar content circulated by fax machine
• Know Your Meme, a website and video series which researches and documents the history of copypastas and similar content
• Running gag, a recurring joke
• Snowclone, a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants
• Shitposting, the practice of posting intentionally low-quality or provocative content to troll or solicit reactions from others