{"id":926742,"date":"2026-10-09T16:56:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T16:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/926742\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T16:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T16:56:17","slug":"parlance-of-our-times-copium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/926742\/","title":{"rendered":"Parlance of our Times: \u2018Copium\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew Rhys in Widow\u2019s Bay.Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

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: \u201cCopium\u201d<\/p>\n

Copium, n.<\/p>\n

An imaginary drug that enables denial or rationalization of unpleasant realities. <\/p>\n

As we stumble forward on this, the darkest timeline \u2013 where the leader of the free world is a cartoon mob boss; there\u2019s a breakneck race to build machines that might kill us all; and the aforementioned mob boss says not to worry because he\u2019s in charge of the killing machines \u2013 there are some days when just coping with it all is the best you can do. And if there are days when you can\u2019t even manage that, a few deep inhales of copium ought to do the trick.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that? There\u2019s no copium for sale at your local pharmacy, even for ready money? Yes, it\u2019s true: Copium isn\u2019t an actual product you can ingest when times are tough. It\u2019s more a state of mind, a desperate way to avoid thinking about ugly truths.<\/p>\n

It began with hopium, a substance brought to popular consciousness by a cranky Chicago Tribune columnist writing about Barack Obama\u2019s hold on his progressive supporters back in 2008. \u201cIt\u2019s America\u2019s most powerful drug,\u201d wrote John Kass. \u201cOnce on hopium, you won\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parlance of our Times: \u2018Resurface\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But copium and hopium are only about politics to the extent that they\u2019re about fan communities. Whether it\u2019s MAGA, Swifties or the BTS ARMY, there\u2019s 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\u2019 fans use it to visualize Stanley coming home. <\/p>\n

Parlance of our Times: \u2018Lock in\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

(And if copium is too male-coded, may we interest you in delulu? It\u2019s short for delusional, was first used by K-pop fans who dreamed of dating their idols and might be marketed as Copium For Her.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Bay. In the Emmy-festooned Apple TV horror-comedy series \u2013 which creator Katie Dippold originally wrote as a Parks script \u2013 there\u2019s also an ambitious local politician trying to put his town on the map. The problem for Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is that Widow\u2019s Bay is severely haunted by a range of nasty beings. That requires copium.<\/p>\n

And with the show\u2019s next season not expected until 2028, you\u2019ll never guess what the fan base finds itself hankering after on message boards. As one fan observed, \u201cThe amount of copium is unbelievable.\u201d In other words, an unbelievable amount of disbelief. If Karl Marx were on Reddit, he\u2019d grudgingly admit that copium is the opium of the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Matthew Rhys in Widow\u2019s Bay.Photo Illustration by The Globe and Mail Welcome to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,2922,61],"class_list":["post-926742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-noastack","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}