Matthew Rhys in Widow’s Bay.Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail
Welcome to Parlance of our Times, a new biweekly pop-culture etymology column that unpacks a word or phrase that is suddenly everywhere. This week: “Copium”
Copium, n.
An imaginary drug that enables denial or rationalization of unpleasant realities.
As we stumble forward on this, the darkest timeline – where the leader of the free world is a cartoon mob boss; there’s a breakneck race to build machines that might kill us all; and the aforementioned mob boss says not to worry because he’s in charge of the killing machines – there are some days when just coping with it all is the best you can do. And if there are days when you can’t even manage that, a few deep inhales of copium ought to do the trick.
What’s that? There’s no copium for sale at your local pharmacy, even for ready money? Yes, it’s true: Copium isn’t an actual product you can ingest when times are tough. It’s more a state of mind, a desperate way to avoid thinking about ugly truths.
It began with hopium, a substance brought to popular consciousness by a cranky Chicago Tribune columnist writing about Barack Obama’s hold on his progressive supporters back in 2008. “It’s America’s most powerful drug,” wrote John Kass. “Once on hopium, you won’t care if Iran has nukes or if taxes are raised during a recession or whether Obama keeps flipping and flopping on everything from foreign wiretaps to withdrawing troops from Iraq.”
Parlance of our Times: ‘Resurface’
If hopium allows its addicts to accentuate the positive, copium helps its users eliminate the negative. And with the rise of Donald Trump, a huge market opened up in the online discourse. Sore losers of all political persuasions were depicted using copium respirators.
But copium and hopium are only about politics to the extent that they’re about fan communities. Whether it’s MAGA, Swifties or the BTS ARMY, there’s a common mindset among online obsessives that leads to the use of hopiates and copiates. Gaming subcultures need it when release dates are pushed back; anime communities share it when beloved characters die; Leafs’ fans use it to visualize Stanley coming home.
Parlance of our Times: ‘Lock in’
(And if copium is too male-coded, may we interest you in delulu? It’s short for delusional, was first used by K-pop fans who dreamed of dating their idols and might be marketed as Copium For Her.)
If hopium was the drug of choice on the sitcom Parks and Recreation, with Leslie Knope and company doing their best to inspire the oblivious town of Pawnee, Ind., then copium is Widow’s Bay. In the Emmy-festooned Apple TV horror-comedy series – which creator Katie Dippold originally wrote as a Parks script – there’s also an ambitious local politician trying to put his town on the map. The problem for Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is that Widow’s Bay is severely haunted by a range of nasty beings. That requires copium.
And with the show’s next season not expected until 2028, you’ll never guess what the fan base finds itself hankering after on message boards. As one fan observed, “The amount of copium is unbelievable.” In other words, an unbelievable amount of disbelief. If Karl Marx were on Reddit, he’d grudgingly admit that copium is the opium of the people.