About

Whew Chile The Ghetto is a series of TikTok videos in which users describe things using the often offensive term "ghetto" which, as an adjective, means cheap or inferior. The videos, which became popular in December 2019, used a Real Housewives of Atlanta sound clip.

Origin

On November 24th, 2019, season six episode four of Real Housewives of Atlanta^[1] aired featuring a clip in which NeNe describes a neighborhood by saying "whew chile the ghetto" (shown below).

On December 6th, 2019, TikTok user @userconnorw uploaded the sound clip and made a video in which he describes Spotify as inferior to Apple Music (shown below).

Spread

On December 9th, TikTok user @realliamsilk gained over 630,500 likes in two days with their use of the sound clip (shown below, left). The next day, TikToker @noahpugliano used the sound to recount a time when he thought a $300,000 budget for a house was cheap. The video gained 529,400 likes in a day. That same day, TikTok user @sarahmagusara gained over 1.1 million likes in a day for her variation (shown below, right). The next day, The Daily Dot^[2] published an article on the memes saying, "It appears that most of these TikToks are meant to be lighthearted in nature, and users are poking fun at their younger selves for their judgments. But many think white TikTok users calling things “ghetto” is racially insensitive."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References