The original post is no longer reachable.
- SourceNo single original
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
Text that spreads by being pasted rather than linked, and the only truly platform-independent internet form.
What this was
A post classified under marine-life.
It first appeared in 2006, during early YouTube.
It is the internet's folk-literature mechanism, and it is much older than the web — the same texts circulated as faxlore and before that as photocopied office jokes. It is also the one meme format that no platform change can kill, because it requires nothing but a text field. Creepypasta, the horror genre, is a direct derivative and named after it.
Individual copypastas have become fixtures with their own histories — a chest-beating military threat, a Reddit post about the ownership of certain aquatic mammals, the complete script of an animated film about bees posted at length into unrelated comment sections. The form has outlasted every site it was invented on.
More from 2006
- Dove Evolution The story 2006Early YouTube
- Nico Nico Douga The story 2006Early YouTube
- Here It Goes Again The story 2006Early YouTube
- Diet Coke and Mentos Source gone 2006Early YouTube
- 2006Early YouTube
- Loituma Girl The story 2006Early YouTube
- 2006Early YouTube
- 2006Early YouTube
- lonelygirl15 The story 2006Early YouTube
- Fred Figglehorn The story 2006Early YouTube
Early YouTube
- Kelly Shoes The story 2007Early YouTube
- Lolcat The story 2007Early YouTube
- Bilibili The story 2009Early YouTube
- r/IAmA The story 2009Early YouTube
- Maru the cat The story 2008Early YouTube
- Pepe the Frog Look 2008Early YouTube
- Grass Mud Horse The story 2009Early YouTube
- I'mma let you finish The story 2009Early YouTube
Related
- Left Shark The story 2015The platform era
Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.
What we knowWhere it came from
There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- A post classified under marine-life.