About

The Life of A Community (Japanese: コミュニティの一生) refers to a series of copypasta explaining how a community forms, flourishes, and falls. In a similar vein to Meme Life Cycle Chart on the Westerners web, the copypastas have been circulating on 2channel/5channel and among Japanese Twitter users since the middle of 2000s.

Origin

According to several Japanese online glosarries^[1][2][3], the oldest instance of this copypasta is an anon's post on 2channel's /ff/ (Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy) board on October 23rd, 2003.^[4] It was in a thread for parodying Dragon Quest 3 players by Doraemon's Shift-JIS arts, and had been getting annoyed by a handful number of trolls. Hence, this post took up AAs (Ascii Arts), which is used as the equivalent term of Shift-JIS arts in the Japanese, as an example.

Translation:

1. A thread starts.

2. Talented people liven up its atmosphere by providing Shift-JIS arts. People gather to enjoy it.

3. Other able people join onto the thread and give a boost by creating their original Shift-JIS arts. This is the peak of the thread.

4. Idiots and morons who can't create anything join onto the bandwagon and spoil the thread. Their useless affection works the other way. The thread's quality quickly goes down.

5. Most of people get tired of the thread and leave from it. Only idiots and morons who have nowhere to go remain. The thread becomes filled with their brags, prejudices, battles, insults and boring replies using 2channel slangs.

6. Even idiots get tired of meaningless battles and leave from the thread.

7. Morons who can't provide anything just repeat posting empty posts to bump the thread while dreaming of its old glorious days. They're brain-dead.

Spread

That 2003 post had been occasionally modified and pasted to other threads on 2channel in the first half of 2000s, and also given its own thread on /gline/ board in December 2005.^[5] Besides, Hiroyuki Nishimura, the admin of the anonymous community in those days, posted a similar opinion to 2channel's /news/ board in February 2006.^[6] Those online glossaries also refer to the internet celebrity's comment as one of the archetypes of this copypasta.

Translation:

Every chatting threads goes like

Early Stage:
Talented people write something interesting.

Middle Stage:
Talentless people gather to read it.

End Stage:
Talentless people begin writing something uninteresting.

Based on these posts, various derivative forms which parodied it or changed its target of criticism were made and spread on 2chanel, Futaba Channel (2chan) and Japanese blogosphere in late 2000s, and it became to settle into a certain format around the beginning of 2010s (shown below).^[2]

Translation:

[The Life of A Community]

Interesting people do something interesting.
↓
Ordinary people gather because it's interesting.
↓
Ordinary people settle down in it and start making a noise to hold their place.
↓
Interesting people give up on it and leave.
↓
Ordinary people left behind do something uninteresting.
↓
Everybody disappears because it's uninteresting.

After the popularization of Twitter on the Japanese web in the first half of 2010s, this copypasta became much more spread on the social web, partly because these Japanese-written copypastas could be utilized within 140-character limit of the microblogging service.^[7] Since then, The Life of A Community copypasta has been well used and cited as a convenient means by people who want to express their thoughts about online communities and user-generated creative movements as well as web services or media titles which seem to have reached the decline stage.

Search Interest

External References