What You're Seeing Is Advanced Warfare

Submission 6,973

Part of a series on Call of Duty. [View Related Entries]

About

What You're Seeing Is Advanced Warfare is an image and video caption meme based on a scene from the 2014 video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in which the character Jonathan Irons (Kevin Spacey) points at the Atlas Corporation military facility and says, "What you're seeing is advanced warfare."

Origin

On November 4th, 2014, the video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was released.^[1] During one of the first cutscenes of the game, the character Jonathan Irons, portrayed by actor Kevin Spacey, shows the main protagonist Jackson "Jack" Mitchell, the Atlas Corporation military facility (scene shown below).

What you're seeing is advanced warfare. Atlas has the single largest standing military in the world and we answer to no country. Unlike the government, we don't keep secrets of our capabilities. We don't sell policy, we sell power. We are a superpower for hire.

Prior to November 2021, the clip saw occasional use in memes online. On November 5th, 2017, YouTuber^[2] Pickle O posted the earliest found meme that used the clip, combining it with a viral video of a hippopotamus defecating (shown below, left). The video received over 1,400 views in five years. On October 12th, 2019, Redditor^[3] TemperVOD created the earliest known image caption meme with it, with the meme, a Pro-Hong Kong Mei meme, gaining over 370 upvotes in /r/dankmemes in two years (shown below, right).

On February 3rd and 4th, 2020, Redditor^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7] Global_Hedgehog posted a series of three memes based on an altered quote, with the second post gaining over 6,900 upvotes in /r/dankmemes and 26,200 upvotes in /r/memes in two years (images shown below, left, center left, center right). On February 5th, 2020, Redditor^[8] CMNG713 posted an anti-meme based, which received over 9,800 upvotes in /r/antimeme (shown below, right).

On November 8th, YouTube^[9] user uncle tham posted a video of a woman working out at a gym in a weird fashion combined with the clip, with the video gaining over 10,000 views in five months (shown below, left). On the same day, YouTuber^[10] upstairs neighbor uploaded a green screen template of the clip (shown below, right).

Spread

On November 9th, 2022, Redditor^[11] ussvincent11 posted a meme using the reaction image to the /r/memes subreddit, where it gained over 1,600 upvotes in five months (shown below, left). Later on the same day, Redditor^[12] 48H1 posted a history meme that gained over 14,200 upvotes in the /r/HistoryMemes subreddit (shown below, right).

Through November 2021, the format achieved notable virality on YouTube, Reddit and other platforms. For example, on November 15th, YouTuber^[13] Caffeinated_Spooder226 posted a meme that gained over 128,000 views in five months (shown below, left). On November 19th, 2022, Facebook^[14] page Nefarious Napoleonic Memes posted a history meme that received 900 reactions and over 340 shares in the same period (shown below, right).

The format maintained its prominence online in late 2021 and early 2022.