5ever

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About

5ever (sometimes spelled 5eva or 5evur) is a slang term meaning “more than forever" and the superlative form of its SMS shorthand "4ever." Believed to have originated from a copypasta story that began circulating in early 2011, the term is used ironically to mimic the non-standard grammar or syntax often found in online conversations.

Origin

The earliest definition of "five-ever"^[2] was submitted to Urban Dictionary in April 2006. A second entry for its shorthand “5 ever”^[1] was submitted in August 2010. Its earliest known use as the superlative of "4ever" was introduced in a copypasta image resembling a handwritten note posted by Tumblr user Deathray-Deathray^[13] on March 10th, 2011. The image contained a short teenage romance story written in Comic Sans with a side note encouraging readers to reblog or like if they “crey.”

The post quickly spread on Tumblr and gained nearly 44,000 likes and reblogs as of May 2012. The same day, this image was reshared on a Threadless user profile page^[18] where it received more than 80 comments.

Usage of 4ever

The term “4ever,” short for forever, has been used since the early 1990s, with the earliest reference found in the title of the play Servy-n-Bernice 4Ever^[21] which premiered in October 1991. Over the next decade, 4ever became more commonplace with the advents of short message service mobile (SMS) technology. An Urban Dictionary^[16] definition was submitted in 2007.

Spread

Throughout March 2011, similar variations of the copypasta surfaced on other blogs and social networking platforms including Blogspot^[3], 4chan, Reddit^[14] and YouTube. One of the earliest archived instances of the copypasta on 4chan was posted to the /v/ (video games)^[4] board on July 13th, 2011. The same day, it showed up in a thread on OperatorChan^[5]’s /cp/ (Copypasta) board.

On August 17th, 2011, YouTuber Unsterblich856 posted the identical copypasta as a comment^[15] in the YouTube clip titled “THE BEST GAMERS – League of Legends Review (PC) [HD]”, receiving additional exposure after being highlighted as the most voted user comment.

The screenshot of Unsterblich856’s YouTube comment was posted to the Bodybuilding^[6] forum, NeoGAF forum^[17] and Reddit^[14], further boosting its notoriety. On August 23rd, an audioBoo^[9] user named Duke posted a sound clip of himself reading the story aloud, which was later featured in several different video interpretations of the story.^[10]^[11]

On December 12th, 2011, a Reddit circlejerk thread^[28] appeared as an Ask Me Anything thread for the male character in the original copypasta story. As of May 2012, there are nearly 400 archived 4chan threads^[25], more than 900 Reddit posts^[26] and more than 700 deviantArt works^[27] that contain the word “5ever.” Both the original copypasta and related image macros have continued to spread on Tumblr and the tag #5ever^[8] has become linked with blog posts playing off of the original story and containing the “reblog if you X” prompt (below left) or self-confessional posts declaring one's affection for someone or something. (below right).