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.

Almost half a million people living in Austria cannot afford a balanced diet on a regular basis. Conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer has a very special explanation for the widespread poverty, which also affects children: He blames the parents. In a video published in September from a wine bar in Hallein, he claims in front of party officials that everyone in Austria can afford one hot meal a day; after all, the cheapest meal is "a hamburger at McDonald's." To date, Nehammer has not apologized for this statement - on the contrary, he defends his stance on social networks.

The data says otherwise: according to Statistik Austria, 447,000 people in Austria last year did not have the financial means to eat meat, fish or corresponding vegetarian meals every other day, the Austrian Volkshilfe said in a statement. That is about five percent of the total population. Since 2021, the number of people affected by poverty in Austria has almost doubled, 78,000 of whom are children and young people alone, 18,000 less than six years old. In response to this, Volkshilfe Wien organizes a food distribution every Tuesday in the third district of the municipality; around 250 food packages are distributed to Viennese people affected by poverty.

In Austria, inflation is higher than in almost any other continental European country. As recently as August, the rate of inflation rose again, and this has an impact above all on everyday life: "Food prices in particular are rising and rising," Volkshilfe wrote in one of its mailings. To draw attention to this problem, it organizes a food collection every year on "Poverty Day" on October 17." In one of the richest countries in the world, there should not be such poverty," says the federal director of Volkshilfe Austria, Erich Fenninger. As a result of inflation, the situation is increasingly tense and the number of needy people is rising in tandem with the decline in donations, Michael Häupl, the long-time Social Democratic mayor and now president of Volkshilfe Vienna, tells jW: "The problem is that many of our long-time donors come from classes at risk of poverty.Today, they have to take advantage of our offers themselves."Häupl added: "I know people who were sitting with me at [the winery] three years ago, and now they're standing in line with us because they can't afford food anymore."

In addition to the 78,000 children whose parents can no longer afford many foods, there are 350,000 adolescents at risk of poverty in Austria. However, the effectiveness of organizations that want to fight poverty is limited - Häupl also knows this: "In my student days, I would have said that we are the doctor at the bedside of capitalism."

[...]

At this year's Volkshilfe campaign in Vienna-Erdberg, 100 volunteers collected 5.7 tons of food - almost 2 tons more than the year before. Tanja Wehsely, managing director of Volkshilfe Wien, is pleased about this, but warns: "The wave of inflation has long since become a wave of poverty." Without further political measures, there will be no long-term reduction in poverty. In the jW interview, she therefore calls for concrete measures, especially against rising housing costs: "Housing is the biggest price driver.Housing must no longer be an object of speculation by the market," says Wehsely.Without a clear political signal, Volkshilfe cannot fight poverty, but only alleviate hardship.A committed doctor can cure the symptoms of an incurable disease, but cannot prevent its outbreak. For the latter, capitalism would have to be eliminated from the world.