TF2 Seal / Selbyen

About

TF2 Seal refers to a seal named Silvia featured in the Team Fortress 2 Player Destruction map Selbyen, officially added to the game in July 2023 as part of the game's Summer update. Silvia crawls from a van on one end of the map to the ocean, the goal for each team being to kill players, grab buckets of fish dropped by them, then feed the seal, with the team to feed the most fish to the seal awarded the win. Following the official addition of Selbyen to the game, fan art, memes and content about Silvia became popular online.

Origin

On November 15th, 2022, a community "Player Destruction" map for Team Fortress 2 titled "Selbyen," created by FGD5, Lo-Fi Longcat, Rhamkin and Zythe_, was added to the Steam Workshop.^[1] According to the map's description, it takes place in the "waterside town of Selbyen, where seals are released back to the shores to rejoin their friends and family." The map features a seal character named Silvia^[2] who travels across the map to the ocean. Each team must kill players on the opposite team, pick up dropped buckets of fish and feed the seal, with the team to feed the seal the most awarded the win.

On July 12th, 2023, Team Fortress 2's summer update arrived, which officially added a number of new maps, including Selbyen, to the game's rotation.^[3] A trailer for the map was posted to zythe_'s YouTube page that day, garnering over 5,000 views in two days (shown below).

Spread

Following the official update, Silvia became increasingly popular online, inspiring fan art, memes and content about her. On July 12th, 2023, Twitter^[4] user @heavyfortres posted a video of the seal set to the here comes the boy audio, writing, "this seal is the best thing they've ever added to the game," garnering over 28,900 likes in two days (shown below). Twitter^[5] user @rhafamonas posted an edit featuring the seal that day, showing it leaving the van, garnering over 24,000 likes in two days.

Fan art and memes of the seal become popular on sites including Tumblr, Twitter and the /r/tf2 subreddit over the following days. On July 13th, Redditor u/Geranium_Bonbon posted artwork of the seal as Saxton Hale to /r/tf2,^[6] garnering over 1,400 upvotes in a day (shown below, left). On the same day, Redditor u/MenKiss posted a crying seal meme to /r/tf2^[7] referencing Silvia as a forced meme, garnering over 2,100 upvotes in a day (shown below, right).

On July 14th, YouTuber^[8] Lessons in Meme Culture posted a video about the popularity of the seal, garnering over 100,000 views in under a day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References