Oh Look, A Civilian Airliner

About

Oh Look, A Civilian Airliner, also known as Oh Hey Look, A Civilian Airliner, refers to a viral audio and viral video in which a male voice is narrating the intrusive thoughts of a close-in weapon system (CIWS) that sees a civilian airliner in the sky and contemplates whether or not to shoot it down. The videos fall under the category of Missile AI Voice memes that use AI-generated text-to-speech voices, originally based on The Missile Knows Where It Is. The video was originally posted to YouTube in April 2023, originally named I Am Completely and Mentally Stable.

Origin

On April 21st, 2023, YouTuber^[1] Tym3Glitch posted a video called "I Am Completely and Mentality Stable" which generated a text-to-speech, male voice that recited the thoughts of a close-in weapon system seeing a civilian airliner, saying:

I am completely and mentally stable. Oh, hey, look, a civilian airliner. [Do it. You know you wanna do it. Lock it. Just do it. Just lock onto that civilian airliner. C'mon, just do it. Do it now. Just do it. You know you wanna do it. Lock it. Just do it. C'mon, just do it. Do-] I can't take it anymore!

Over the course of three months, the video gained roughly 130,200 views and 9,600 likes (shown below).

Spread

One of the first-known iterations of the meme that used the original video's audio was posted by TikToker^[2] @sunset_gato on May 1st, 2023. The TikToker reanimated the scene and kept the audio, receiving roughly 154,600 plays and 17,000 likes in two months (shown below).

In the months that followed, YouTubers also created variations of the meme. For instance, on May 19th, 2023, YouTuber^[3] Mytheal used real footage of a Phalanx CIWS locking onto a passenger plane (posted to TikTok^[4] and Reddit^[5] in May 2023). The video gained roughly 52,700 views and 3,800 likes in two months (shown below, left). On June 6th, 2023, YouTuber^[6] AcetvgamingYT posted an iteration that reanimated the scene, gaining roughly 547,000 views and 29,000 likes in one month (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References