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What Does The 'If X Has A Million Followers, I'm One Of Them' Copypasta Mean? The Phrasal Template Meme And Its Origin Explained
They're the words we all dream of hearing, promising unconditional love, undying loyalty no matter what, and near-delusional levels of care. However, it seems people on the internet are a lot more likely to say these words about strangers they' never met than they are about people they really know. The If X has a million fans, I'm one of them copypasta is one of the most notorious online, so what's the real deal with it? Who said it, and does anyone mean it? Let's explain.
Where Did The Copypasta Come From?
It started, like many of the best or worst things in life, on Facebook in 2013. A superfan of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo needed the world to know how they felt (or, alternately, a troll wanted to make fun of superfans) so they wrote:
From there, the phrase circulated among fans of soccer and specifically among fans of Cristiano Ronaldo. Stan culture has long been one of the essential fuels for internet culture. Committed superfans are the most dedicated and prolific posters, the backbone of any community.
The phrase started to be applied ironically to other famous people in 2018 and 2019, appearing in Twitch chats and on Twitter / X. Prominent examples focused on the YouTuber Onision while he faced controversial and complicated sexual assault allegations.
How Do People Use The Copypasta?
Ironically, most of the time. Often, people will swap a new name or idea into the place of Ronaldo. Sometimes this is satirical and over the top.
Other times it shows how overblown fan appreciation can be, and seems to be an extreme instance of how somebody can make loving a famous person a core part of their personality and the hill they will always choose to die on.
Does Franz Kafka Have Anything To Do With It?
As the copypasta picked up variety in the fall of 2021, people online started circulating a variant of it claiming that it had been written by Franz Kafka, one of the most famous writers of the 20th century. Specifically, this version of the copypasta claimed that it came from a series of love letters he wrote to Milena Jesenská, with whom he had a long-distance relationship in 1920. The ostensibly Kafka-derived version of the copypasta goes:
If a million loved you, I am one of them, and if one loved you, it was me, and if no one loved you then know that I am dead.
There is no part of the published Letters to Milena that contains these words or anything like them. But that hasn't stopped people online from claiming that Franz Kafka "invented" this meme and this copypasta.
https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7206682759408962821
Why Do People Post The Copypasta?
The internet is for expressing emotions, and memes aren't always funny: they're often heart-crushingly sincere. But at the same time, there's nothing funnier than somebody being emotional. The fiendish devotion displayed in the copypasta is simultaneously relatable and laughable.
Copypastas are also one of the oldest and most venerable forms of meme: they mock a community, a kind of speech, and a form of engagement. This copypasta works because there are many who would say it is, in fact, real.
For the full history of "If X has a million fans, I'm one of them," be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.
