I Grew Up on These Streets

About

I Grew Up on These Streets refers to a series of memes subverting the expression "I grew up on the streets," usually by pairing it with images of famous locations from various videogames. The original version of the meme, which paired the expression with an image of the City Map Rug, was first posted in 2016.

Origin

On May 20th, 2016, X^[1] / Twitter user @christiand posted an image of the City Map Rug, captioning it, "rt if u grew up in these streets." The post humorously subverted the expression "I grew up on the streets," which could be used to emphasize one's toughness, and garnered over 2,500 reposts and 4,000 likes in eight years (shown below).

Spread

On May 21s, 2016, the X^[2] / Twitter account for 9GAG made a repost of the joke, gaining over 3,700 reposts and 4,700 likes, with more reposts following on X, Reddit and other social media in the following years. Prior to January 2024, the format saw limited use online: for example, on September 20th, 2020, an unknown Redditor posted another joke that received 50 upvotes in /r/meme^[3] in four years (shown below).

On January 5th, 2024, X^[4] / Twitter user @RetroTechDreams posted a screenshot from the 2000 video game The Sims, captioning the image, "I grew up on these streets." The post (shown below) accrued over 3,900 reposts and 12,000 likes in one month.

The post was followed by other users posting screenshots of famous location from various video games and captioning them with the catchphrase. For example, on January 7th, 2024, X^[5] user @straussanator posted an screenshot from Roller Coaster Tycoon that received over 2,200 reposts and 5,800 likes in one month (shown below, left). On January 8th, X^[6] user @papercats_ posted a screenshot from MovieStarPlanet that received over 1,300 reposts and 6,800 likes in the same period.

The trend continued on X / Twitter through January 2024.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References