[soylentcola]

Those copy-paste texts are memes in the original sense. Oddly enough, I first read the term in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" before I was aware of the origin.

The concept of a meme is a unit of information or idea, akin to a gene in living organisms. Successful memes are good at spreading and being replicated. Much like with genes, they alter over time and can become better at being picked up and spread further.

It's more a way of looking at the spread of ideas than an actual "thing" but it encompasses everything from lolcats to recipes to economic theories to religions. A successful idea is one that inherently makes people want to share it.