Horny copypasta takes the trend a step further, using sexual innuendos to memorialize major world or news events. While they’re purposefully made NSFW, the texts are intended to be copied wholesale and then sent to as many friends as possible. (Think replacing a portion of Christopher Columbus with the peach emoji.) While horny copypasta usually thrives during holidays, a swath of recent deaths and events have sent copypasta writers into overdrive. But several writers tell Rolling Stone that the meme format isn’t just a good laugh— it’s a way for people to use humor to address a world that has become increasingly dystopian.

What?

“In recent years, as the internet has become a shell of what it used to be, where it is no longer this free realm of information and connection but rather a hyper-sterilized wasteland of ads and sensationalized content, that we yearn for something novel and familiar,” Dravved says. “That’s where the exaggerated removed of the copypasta comes in. You take something either mundane — like a holiday or tragic, like a death — and you turn [it] into this weird amalgamation of what you remember the internet being like, when you had to sneak downstairs to the family computer to sign on to AIM.”

Yes, the internet has turned to shit, but I still fail to see how exactly horny copypasta is a pleasant recall to the days of yore.

“There are definitely people in my life that I almost only have emoji pasta touchpoints with anymore, folks that I was friends with years ago and their lives have taken them different places,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I enjoy having a reason to reach out to folks that I might not otherwise talk to on a day-to-day basis.” One writer, who asked not to be identified in order to protect their budding emoji text chain empire, acknowledges that the past two weeks have been full of news items perfect for more sexy emoji rants. But they tell Rolling Stone, the fear of burnout won’t prevent them from staying “the juiciest source for [everyone’s] horny copypasta desires,” mostly because shitposting has no office hours.

Amazing how this article keeps getting weirder and dumber at the same time, wow.

Dravved also notes that while copypasta surrounding death might seem gauche, they’re a common way for people on the internet to deal with an excess of seemingly massive world events. “It’s a form of coping for a lot of people. Focusing on making the stupidest, most depraved copypasta you can come up with helps distract you for a bit, and maybe laugh instead of focusing on how many lives will be ruined,” he says. “The more people who are able to just turn off their brain and post some horn garbage, the better. The world sucks. It helps to know that there’s always people willing to laugh at it.”

The absolute state of Western liberalism going into 2024, huh.