Copypasta
A block of text copied and pasted repeatedly across the internet, often evolving into a shared quotation.
Copypasta is a piece of text that is copied and pasted repeatedly across online forums, social media, and chat applications. The term is a playful compound of 'copy-paste' and 'pasta,' suggesting a dish that has been reheated and served many times.
Copypasta can be a joke, a rant, a fake historical fact, a chain-letter threat, or a deliberate absurdity. Some are decades old, such as the Navy Seals copypasta; others emerge overnight and mutate as they travel.
As a quotation form, copypasta is unusual because authorship is usually lost. The text is not attributed to a named writer; it is attributed to the community that spreads it. This makes it a folk quotation of the internet age.
Common mistake: treating copypasta as a genuine source. Even when it quotes real sources, the copypasta version is often altered, decontextualized, or entirely fictional.
“I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda...”
Keep reading the glossary
A short, image-anchored quote in the modern viral sense — quickly shared, easily altered, and prone to misattribution.
A quote deliberately invented and attributed to someone for credibility, humour, or harm.
A quotation stripped of the surrounding argument or occasion that made it mean what it originally meant.
The convention of citing only the author's name when quoting in casual writing.