It’s not what’s for dinner.
Though this tasty shot is of delicious pasta from Ward Street Bistro looks amazing, it has nothing to do with ‘copypasta’. Image courtesy of Ward Street Bistro.
This week’s meme is actually a term to help us build up to a meme (you’ll see what I mean in a week).
Pasta on pasta on pasta, courtesy of aglioolioepeperoncino.com
So what on earth is ‘Copypasta‘? Well put simply, its text that is copied and pasted over and over and over again. The term usually refers to a type of ‘trolling‘ (or internet pestering) which involves users bombarding other users with ‘spammy‘ or bad content. Copypasta acts as a vehicle to spam others, and is copied (hence ‘copy’) and pasted (hence ‘pasta’) into forums, on Facebook walls, around 4Chan…basically anywhere and everywhere.
Yes, I am posting tons of pasta pictures because I’m hungry and trying to wreck your diet. Am I succeeding? This gem is courtesy of Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss!
I have sometimes used the term ‘copypasta’ when speaking about mass-emailing before the time of mail merge, where you would have to copy and paste entire pitches over and over again instead of using the more efficient mail-merging software we have now (i.e. Sailthru, Mailchimp, etc).
This fabulous pasta picture is courtesy of Slash Food
KnowYourMeme (my favorite site in the entire world) cites the first usage of the term ‘copypasta’ originated in 2006 via 4Chan.
Oh, and what a joy it is. This gem comes from Paula Wirth on Flickr
Now that we all understand the meaning of ‘copypasta’ stay tuned for next week, where we learn about one of its offspring, ‘creepypasta’.
City Gopher 