Copium Meaning Explored: What Does The Meme Mean on Twitch?

Copium has origins that can be traced back to 2003, when it first appeared as the title of an album by Keak da Sneak. It went unnoticed for well over a decade, never even entering circulation before it became a popular meme and a common term used on Twitch.

It was in 2016 that the modern-day word first surfaced. Since then, it has become a term regularly used on platforms like Twitch and other social media.

What Does Copium Mean on Twitch?

Image Credit: Know Your Meme

As a meme term, copium is satirical. It’s used by a whole community of gamers on platforms like Twitch and Reddit. It’s an amalgamation of two terms: ‘cope’ and ‘opium’ and falls into the specific Twitch category, much like KEKW. Essentially, it’s a joke term used to describe a fictional drug you might need to cope with a gaming loss.

For example, you could lose several games of Valorant back to back, and your viewers might suggest that you should take a hearty dose of copium.

Copium is often used alongside popular meme character, Pepe. Pepe makes for a popular copium meme template. From 2018 onwards, the Pepe copium meme began appearing all over the internet. This way, you don’t even need to type the word and can simply drop the meme.

On Twitch, and more commonly in the world of esports, it’s often said that supporters of a team that’s underperforming are high on copium.  Supporting a team that is consistently losing isn’t easy. So they must be relying copium to help them…well, cope. Today, the copium meme is one of the most common memes in any Twitch chat.

Hopium v Copium Meaning

Hopium is very similar to copium, in that it’s a meme word that shouldn’t necessarily be taken seriously. While copium is used in a situation where someone needs to ‘cope’ with something, hopium is a term used to mock ‘false hope’. It’s a term that has some foundation in the cryptocurrency community. If you’re holding onto a cryptocurrency that’s underperforming, you might be using hopium to believe it’ll make a comeback.

Ultimately, both the copium meaning and hopium are joke terms. They can apply to many different games as well including New World and Genshin Impact. Copium is pretty dynamic and not limited to gaming. You can use copium in any context.