You Have Alerted the Horde
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About
You Have Alerted the Horde refers to a notification in the 2008 video game Left 4 Dead and its 2009 sequel Left 4 Dead 2, which appears when a player does an action that alerts common Infected to their presence, with dozens of Infected then running towards and attacking the survivors. Online, the image has been used as a reaction and a caption meme since at least the late 2010s, spreading in the 2020s.
Origin
On November 18th, 2008, the first-person shooter video game Left 4 Dead was released, with its sequel Left 4 Dead 2 released one year later on November 17th, 2019. In both games, if a person on the player's team performs a certain action such as triggering a car alarm, a large number of Infected swarm the survivors. Upon performing such an action, the notification "⚠️ [X] alerted the horde" is displayed (video shown below). If the player themselves triggers the alarm, the message "⚠️ Here they come…" is displayed.
On October 20th, 2019, Redditor XenoFeels posted the earliest found meme based on the notification, a caption meme that received over 1,000 upvotes in the /r/furry_irl[1] subreddit in five years (shown below).
Spread
Prior to August 29th, 2020, an unknown user posted a video based on foot fetishists commenting in Abigail Shapiro's comment on Facebook, using the notification for comedic effect. On August 29th, 2020, iFunny[2] user Magmayagen reposted the video, with the upload gaining over 100 smiles in four years (a better quality reupload[3] shown below).
In the early 2020s, the notification saw continued use as an image caption meme and a reaction image. For example, on October 1st, 2020, Redditor _Joe_Momma_ posted a meme that received over 5,900 upvotes in the /r/Gamingcirclejerk[4] subreddit in four years (shown below, left). In June 2021, a video parodying Left 4 Dead 2 referencing the gameplay element went viral (authorship unconfirmed; YouTube[5] reupload shown below, right).
Starting in early 2022, a series of GIF caption memes using the notification as the phrasal template "You Have Alerted the X" saw spread, with multiple examples uploaded to Tenor for further use on Discord. On January 31st, 2022, Tenor[6] user bigf1sh420 posted the earliest found GIF in the series, a horse GIF captioned "You have alerted the horse" (shown below, left).
Various Examples
Templates
Search Interest
External References
[1] Reddit – Horde🧟♂️irl
[2] iFunny – Magmayagen
[3] iFunny – Snapcat221
[5] YouTube – You Have Alerted The Horde
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