Copypasta

A copypasta is a block of text copied and pasted to the Internet and social media. Copypasta containing controversial ideas or lengthy rants are often posted for humorous purposes, to provoke reactions from those unaware that the posted text is a meme.

The term copypasta is derived from the computer interface term "copy and paste",^[1] the act of selecting a piece of text and copying it elsewhere.

Usage of the word can be traced back to an anonymous 4chan thread from 2006,^[2][3] and Merriam-Webster record it appearing on Usenet and Urban Dictionary for the first time that year.^[1]

The Navy Seal copypasta, also sometimes known as Gorilla Warfare due to 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 that's 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, although the earliest known usage of the copypasta was on 4chan on November 11th, 2010.^[4]

The most commonly used version of the copypasta reads as follows:

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda [sic], and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla [sic] warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.^[5]

Although more than likely written as a joke, in 2019 the copypasta appeared in the alleged manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings, causing some news sources to report the claims at face value.^[6]

The Bee Movie copypasta, often called the Bee Movie script, 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,^[7] and it was popularized when edits of the film were first uploaded to YouTube in late 2016.^[8]

"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."^[9] 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."^[10]

While most copypastas are meant to be humorous as memes, some have been used to propagate certain ideas or even change public opinion. In a noted 2024 case from the Philippines, seasoned Filipino actor Mon Confiado filed a cyberlibel complaint against a content creator who posted the Flying Lotus copypasta, substituting Flying Lotus with the actor's name. The copypasta narrates an encounter with a well-known person behaving badly in a grocery store.^[11][12]

In computing, copypasta can refer to a piece of code that was copied and pasted.^[13] Discussions of copypasta can be found in the code history of Linux, such as a 2013 comment describing code which "very much looks like copypasta"^[14] (suggesting it was not originally authored) and correction of a "copypasta mistake"^[15] where code was copied and not correctly amended.

Look up copypasta in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• 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 that 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

• Copypasta Database