Navy Seal Copypasta

About

Navy Seal Copypasta (also known as the “Marine Copypasta ”, " Internet Tough Guy Copypasta” and “Gorilla Warfare Copypasta”) is a facetious message containing a series of ridiculous claims and grandiose threats that portray the poster as an Internet tough guy stereotype. In the original post, the writer claimed to be a former Navy Seal with a long history of combat experiences, using comical typos and hyperboles like "Gorilla Warfare," “300 Confirmed Kills” and “I can kill you in over 700 ways with just my bare hands.” Since its emergence in mid-2012, the copypasta has spawned a variety of spin-off stories, similar to the John Copypasta meme .

Origin

The copypasta is believed to have originated on the military and weapons enthusiast image board Operator Chan sometime in 2010. The earliest archived posting was submitted on November 11th, 2010 to 4chan's /jp/ [4] ( Otaku Culture) board, in which the poster claimed to have seen the message previously on Operator Chan. On May 24th, 2012, an anonymous user submitted a thread to the /pasta/ [1] board, claiming he had created the original copypasta two to three years prior (shown below). [2]

Spread

On April 4th, 2012, Redditor fahottie submitted a screenshot of a YouTube comment featuring the copypasta to the /r/funny [8] subreddit (shown below), where it received more than 20,000 up votes and 970 comments prior to being archived. On May 22nd, YouTuber Copypasta Sings uploaded a musical version of the copypasta (shown below), which received over 87,000 views and 780 comments in the next nine months. On August 17th, Urban Dictionary [7] member 487j submitted an entry for the term "gorilla warfare," defining it as training that "fake Navy Seals" receive. On November 16th, Newgrounds [5] user JoePorter134 uploaded a dramatic reading of the copypasta. On January 10th, 2013, Redditor LiterallyKesha submitted the message to the /r/copypasta [3] subreddit and provided links to several notable variations. In the next month, the post received over 75 up votes and 135 comments. On February 13th, 2013, 10-year-old Richi Phelps posted a status update featuring a version of the copypasta adapted to Mexican slang on his Facebook profile page. In the following hours, Phelps' status update spread virally across the social networking site, with many Facebook users mocking the boy with photoshopped images for making boastful claims like having "extensive military training" background and "an arsenal of weapons" at his disposal, while unaware of the fact that it was a copied message. By February 14th, Phelps' viral status update had been identified as an adapted version of the Navy Seal copypasta. That same day, the Mexican news sites SDP Noticias [10] and Sipse [9] reported on the phenomenon. On March 15th, 2019, shootings took place at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, during which at least 49 people were killed and an additional 20 were injured. The attacks were livestreamed by the shooter on Facebook, which showed the shooter entering a mosque while shooting a shotgun, before switching to an assault rifle and murdering people inside. In a document shared on 8chan prior to the shooting, the suspected shooter put a version of the Navy Seal Copypasta under the heading "You are a bigot,racist,xenophobe,islamophobe, nazi ,fascist!" (shown below).