About

The Year Is 2016 And You Are Laughing At The Pictures Online refers to a bleak copypasta about memes and isolation. It has appeared in various jokes since first being posted in 2016.

Origin

On July 25th, 2016, Google Plus^[1] user Tigerlily Maynard posted the earliest known version of the copypasta to her account, they note the text was "originally posted by ****." The text reads:

The year is 2016 and you are laughing at the pictures online.
The pictures are funny because you understand the contextual foundation of the jokes. This understanding makes you feel included, as if you're part of an inside-joke.
You look to your left, then to your right. You're actually alone.
You've felt alone for years, but the pictures online help you to forget that. The pictures online make you feel like you're having genuine shared experience.
You know deep down the experience is not genuine, because there is a void in your heart that even the freshest meme could never fill.

Spread

On August 12th, 2016,^[4] an upload of a picture featuring a hamster running across a keyboard in one frame and the copypasta in another frame was uploaded to Imgur (shown below).

On August 19th, 2016, the text was shared to /r/copypasta.^[2] It was shared in a humorous green text story on 4chan on the 22nd.^[3] On February 1st, 2017, the copypasta was posted to /r/forsen and was edited to be Twitch based.^[9] It was posted to FIFA forums by user vLaDz^[6] on the 23rd. On May 7th, 2017, an edit to the copypasta featuring a dog was uploaded to meirl (shown below)^[5].

On October 30th, 2017, the hamster image was posted to /r/me_irl,^[7] where it gained over 1,600 points. The following day, the copypasta was posted in 4chan's /bant/ board.^[8]

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References