50,000 People Used to Live Here. Now It's a Ghost Town

About

50,000 People Used to Live Here. Now It's a Ghost Town, refers to a memorable quote from the 2008 video game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare describing the ghost city of Pripyat. Online, the quote and image macros based on it have been used as a way to describe various abandoned communities, such as old multiplayer games that lost their user base. In September 2021, an audio clip of the quote became a trend in lip-dub skits on TikTok.

Origin

On November 6th, 2007, the first-person shooter video game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was released in the United States.^[1] In the mission "All Ghillied Up," which takes place in Pripyat, character Cpt. MacMillan comments on the abandoned city by saying "Fifty thousand people used to live in this city. Now it's a ghost town" (shown below, left). The phrase is also said at the start of the intro of the game (shown below, right).

Look at this place. Fifty thousand people use to live in this city. Now it's a ghost town… I've never seen anything like it.

Spread

The phrase has gained significant recognition in the Call of Duty community in the following years. The first recognized meme using the phrase was posted by an unknown user between March 29th and 31st, 2017, following the shutdown of Club Penguin servers (original tweet no longer available). On March 31st, 2017, Twitter^[2] account @DankMemePlug reposted the joke, gaining over 1,000 retweets and comments and 2,800 likes (shown below).

Starting in March 2017, the quote received limited spread online, being used to describe communities that lost their userbase among other things (examples shown below).^[3][4]

On April 26th, 2019, Redditor^[5] Peng-Donny posted a meme based on an image macro that combined the phrase with a still image of Pripyat from the intro of the game (shown below). The meme received over 33,000 upvotes in six months.

In the following year, the image macro saw a moderate spread in memes, primarily on Reddit.

Use as a TikTok Sound

Starting in late September 2021, the Call of Duty quote began to see use as a sound and lip-dub on TikTok. The first video that used the sound was posted on September 21st, 2021, uploaded by TikToker^[6] @_jackson_30. The sound was used within the video to make a joke about a "cum sock" ^[7] being accidentally washed. The TikTok (shown below) received roughly 7.7 million plays and 1.2 million likes over the course of one month.

More TikTokers^[8] began to use the sound to make jokes about "the sock" going into the rest of September 2021 and into October. However, the sound received a new cum-adjacent iteration starting in late October 2021. On October 27th, 2021, TikToker^[9] @wellshoootbud posted a video using the sound that showcased his girlfriend's mouth as the resting place of "50,000 people." The TikTok (shown below, left) received roughly 8.6 million plays and 1.3 million likes over the course of two days. More TikTokers began to use the sound with their own girlfriends' mouths going into the end of October, like TikToker^[10] @smackmycupcake, whose video (shown below, right) received roughly 3.9 million plays and 318,400 likes in less than 24 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References