We Are In The Beam
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About
"We Are In The Beam" is a text-to-speech-generated audio phrase from the online first-person shooter video game, Team Fortress 2. It is part of an in-game map that was added in the Invasion Community Update[1]. Due to the line's poor production quality, it quickly gained popularity within the Team Fortress 2 community and has resulted in several remix and mashup videos on YouTube[2].
Origin
On October 6th, 2015, the Invasion Community Update was released for Team Fortress 2, which included a community-made Source Filmmaker video (shown below) and some new maps, one of which named "pd_watergate"[3]. On this map, players are tasked with collecting bottles of beer by killing enemy players and depositing them in a UFO by entering its tractor beam.
Upon any player entering the beam, a text-to-speech-generated voice line is heard saying either "We are in the beam"[4] or "The enemy is in the beam"[5], depending on the team. The voice used is named "WillFromAfar", which is located on the site, Acapela Group[6].
Spread
The earliest known mashup was uploaded via SoundCloud on October 10th, 2015. The song was the phrase played over a segment from We Are Young by Fun. It was later removed, but then reuploaded on YouTube by Diamond Mann[7] (shown below, left). On November 23rd, YouTube user Człowiek Drzewo[8] uploaded a video of the WillFromAfar voice singing over the whole song (shown below, right). The video has approximately 25,000 views as of December 2016.
However, the phrase gained much more popularity when YouTube user Muselk[9] uploaded a gameplay commentary of himself playing the new Watergate map on Team Fortress 2 on October 12th, 2015 (shown below), which contains a short scene playing a segment of We Are Never Getting Back Together by Taylor Swift with the "We are in the beam" phrase placed over it. The video currently has over 1,000,000 views since October 2016.
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Team Fortress 2 – Invasion Community Update page
[2] YouTube – Search results for 'we are in the beam'
[3] Official Team Fortress 2 Wiki – Watergate
[4] Official Team Fortress 2 Wiki – Audio file for 'We are in the beam'
[5] Official Team Fortress 2 Wiki – Audio file for 'The enemy is in the beam'
[7] YouTube – Diamond Mann
[8] YouTube – Człowiek Drzewo
Related Entries 57 total
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