Parody "Empty Streets" Posts

Submission 9,377

Part of a series on COVID-19 Pandemic. [View Related Entries]

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About

Parody "Empty Streets" Posts refers to a series of memes that parody the photographs of empty streets and public spaces made during the COVID-19 pandemic. The parody posts usually feature images of empty video game maps which are jokingly presented as real-life locations that are empty due to the quarantine.

Origin

On March 9th, 2020, an anonymous 4chan's /pol/^[1] user posted a screenshot of Counter-Strike 1.6 map Italy (cs_italy) jokingly presented as a real-life photograph of an Italian town during the ongoing quarantine. On the same day, Redditor^[2] Sandvich18 posted the photograph to /r/4chan where it received over 8,800 upvotes in 18 days (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, the post was widely circulated online. On Twitter, several users recreated the joke; for example, March 10th, 2020, posts by users @EretnaBeyi^[3] and @LebDannyy^[4] received over 100 retweets and 1,500 likes and 6,600 retweets and 31,400 likes, respectively.

On March 12th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @MemeCryptum posted the earliest known derivative of the joke, presenting Halo 2 map District as the city of Mombasa in Kenya. The tweet received over 400 retweets and 2,300 likes (shown below, left). On March 19th, 2020, Twitter^[6] user @_cesargamas posted several screenshots made in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas city Las Venturas, presenting them as Las Vegas. The tweet received over 46,900 retweets and 247,300 likes (shown below, right).

The spread of the format was further prompted by viral March 23rd, 2020, Shrek post by Facebook^[7] page Memes Ruined My Life that received over 13,000 reactions and 23,000 shares in four days (shown below).