The Pasta Shelves Are Empty
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About
"The Pasta Shelves Are Empty" is a memorable quote from a viral video of an elderly man complaining of food shortages during the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in February 2020.
Origin
The earliest available version of the video was published on February 26th, 2020 by the YouTube channel Videos Club. The video features the man ranting in Italian about the lack of food at a local grocery store. The translation of the man's complaints reads, "The pasta shelves are empty. What's happening? There wasn't this much panic when World War II started. Oh, my god." The post received more than 11,000 views in less than one month (shown below).
Spread
That day, Twitter user @SriramSalem44 shared the video. They captioned the post, "Italians mad at food in the time of #coronavirus." The post received more than 4,700 likes and 1,600 retweets in less than one month (shown below).
Italians mad at food in the time of #coronavirus . pic.twitter.com/F7P6cyJ29m
— Sriram Salem (@SriramSalem44) February 26, 2020
Weeks later, the video reemerged on Twitter. Weeks later, on March 9th, Twitter user @Joyce_Karam shared the video from @dailydigger19 that received more than 10 million views, 1,000 likes and 400 retweets in less than one month (shown below).
Hear, hear. Elderly Italian man calls out the #coronavirus hysteria: “The pasta 🍝 shelves are empty…There wasn't this much panic when World War II started.”
He would know: pic.twitter.com/kH062dUdZd— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) March 10, 2020
On March 11th, Twitter user @ianbremmer retweeted a post by @savagedump and received more than 1,300 likes and 395 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).
That day, The Daily Dot [1] published an article about the video.
The pasta shelves are empty and this man is over it #coronavirus #italy pic.twitter.com/H20Fbk7CT4
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) March 11, 2020
