Is "Light The Beam!" Forever?
- Thread starter kingsboi
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I've been thinking about this since late March: what is the shelf life of The Beam? If the Kings become the perennial playoff team that you seem poised to be, or even better, do you continue to light the beam in perpetuity? Do you save it for big games and/or the playoffs? At what point does it become like the cowbell, where it crosses the barrier from neat thing that the fanbase rallies around into obnoxious?
You're making a distinction here that I'm not; to me, the beam and Kings fans go hand in hand.
I don't think that the beam is inherently obnoxious, and I don't think that it's in imminent danger of becoming obnoxious. Nor am I crystal clear on where the line is, but I do believe that there is one. From my point of view the beam could become obnoxious if the Kings develop into a perennial powerhouse, because I feel like there will be an element of "Act like you've been there before." Or, if this season turned out to be a fluke, and the Kings are back to being a 30-win team three years from now, the beam might not be "obnoxious," per se, but it'll definitely be wack. On the other hand, I do like it when the Celtics play the Bee Gees after every home win, or when the Aces in the WNBA play Queen, or when the Kings used to play Ludacris, and those are kinda the same thing, so I'm not firm on where I stand on it. I guess it depends on whether/how the beam is marketed moving forward.
I don't think that the beam is inherently obnoxious, and I don't think that it's in imminent danger of becoming obnoxious. Nor am I crystal clear on where the line is, but I do believe that there is one. From my point of view the beam could become obnoxious if the Kings develop into a perennial powerhouse, because I feel like there will be an element of "Act like you've been there before." Or, if this season turned out to be a fluke, and the Kings are back to being a 30-win team three years from now, the beam might not be "obnoxious," per se, but it'll definitely be wack. On the other hand, I do like it when the Celtics play the Bee Gees after every home win, or when the Aces in the WNBA play Queen, or when the Kings used to play Ludacris, and those are kinda the same thing, so I'm not firm on where I stand on it. I guess it depends on whether/how the beam is marketed moving forward.
I'm not sure, but I gather that the "halo lighting" isn't really a thing that the fans go rabid for. "Light The Halo!" has never been a thing that I was aware of. And therein may lie a difference.
Angels do a Thing, everybody pretty much ignores it or at the very least doesn't make a deal about it, Angels just keep doing it because it's just an arbitrary, barely-noticed Thing.
For that matter, basically all baseball teams do a 7th inning stretch and play Take Me Out To The Ballgame...but it's just a Thing. 50% of the people wouldn't even notice if it got skipped - including me. The last baseball game I went to, the middle of the 7th rolled around and people started standing up and I was like, "Oh, yeah, we're all going to do the Thing." If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have noticed. Have I been to a baseball game where it DIDN'T happen? I don't know! Maybe, but I wouldn't have noticed. If the Angels didn't light up the halo one night following a win that I knew happened, would I (as a hypothetical SoCal resident) notice driving by on the 5 that it was dark? No chance.
Kings do a Thing that can hardly be ignored, market it to the roof (literally), the fans go crazy over it, they chant for it, they post about it incessantly on social media, Thing becomes a brand-centered culturally-significant Phenomenon. People go outside their homes miles away to see if they can get a glimpse of it (for the record, on a clear night from the fields north of Davis, no...maybe if there were some cloud cover to catch it). National media write about it. There are images, and memes. Crazy people go to the trouble of editing animated .gifs like this:
Or like this:
We are definitely dealing with two different classes of, for lack of a better category to fit them both, Tradition.
Clearly just a Thing can carry on for a long time. But it's pretty likely that a Phenomenon cannot be a Phenomenon forever. Humans have too much of a penchant for novelty for forever to happen. So then the question becomes, what happens when the Phenomenon is not a Phenomenon any more? One possibility is that it just becomes a Thing. But another possibility is that it begins to look old and dated in a way that something that started out as a Thing never does, and it has to be dropped. Which happens? I don't know. How long before it begins to come to a head? Well, I'd wager that it won't be before this Sacramento era's championship window is closed. Hopefully that's 10 years and 3 rings down the road. But for all we know (God forbid) it could be next year we're rebuilding again. But my guess is that The Beam is the symbol and identity of this upswing. The Webber/Peja/Divac years were the Glory Era whose gimmick was the Bench Mob. The Fox/Sabonis/Murray?? years are the Beam Team. After that, we probably let it go. My guess.
Angels do a Thing, everybody pretty much ignores it or at the very least doesn't make a deal about it, Angels just keep doing it because it's just an arbitrary, barely-noticed Thing.
For that matter, basically all baseball teams do a 7th inning stretch and play Take Me Out To The Ballgame...but it's just a Thing. 50% of the people wouldn't even notice if it got skipped - including me. The last baseball game I went to, the middle of the 7th rolled around and people started standing up and I was like, "Oh, yeah, we're all going to do the Thing." If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have noticed. Have I been to a baseball game where it DIDN'T happen? I don't know! Maybe, but I wouldn't have noticed. If the Angels didn't light up the halo one night following a win that I knew happened, would I (as a hypothetical SoCal resident) notice driving by on the 5 that it was dark? No chance.
Kings do a Thing that can hardly be ignored, market it to the roof (literally), the fans go crazy over it, they chant for it, they post about it incessantly on social media, Thing becomes a brand-centered culturally-significant Phenomenon. People go outside their homes miles away to see if they can get a glimpse of it (for the record, on a clear night from the fields north of Davis, no...maybe if there were some cloud cover to catch it). National media write about it. There are images, and memes. Crazy people go to the trouble of editing animated .gifs like this:
Or like this:
We are definitely dealing with two different classes of, for lack of a better category to fit them both, Tradition.
Clearly just a Thing can carry on for a long time. But it's pretty likely that a Phenomenon cannot be a Phenomenon forever. Humans have too much of a penchant for novelty for forever to happen. So then the question becomes, what happens when the Phenomenon is not a Phenomenon any more? One possibility is that it just becomes a Thing. But another possibility is that it begins to look old and dated in a way that something that started out as a Thing never does, and it has to be dropped. Which happens? I don't know. How long before it begins to come to a head? Well, I'd wager that it won't be before this Sacramento era's championship window is closed. Hopefully that's 10 years and 3 rings down the road. But for all we know (God forbid) it could be next year we're rebuilding again. But my guess is that The Beam is the symbol and identity of this upswing. The Webber/Peja/Divac years were the Glory Era whose gimmick was the Bench Mob. The Fox/Sabonis/Murray?? years are the Beam Team. After that, we probably let it go. My guess.
Agree with pretty much this whole post, however...didn't they make an upgrade to the power of the beam recently? Could swear I saw it posted that it was gonna be even beamier this season. I'm all in on it for as long as they do it/as long as this core sticks around and it's not going anywhere for a couple seasons at the very least. Beam Team is the best thing to happen to this team in FOREVER.
Yes, they did say that they upgraded it after the season. We'll see about how that goes come October!
I'm not super hopeful, though, because the ability to see a laser in the air relies on the light being scattered by dust/water vapor. If there's enough dust/water in the air to scatter enough of the beam, then there's also probably enough dust/water in the intervening 12-15 miles to absorb the scatter. That's why I figure a cloud deck is the best - the scatter off the cloud deck would be huge, but the air below it may be relatively clear enough for the purple glow at the bottom of the cloud to get that far.
I'm not super hopeful, though, because the ability to see a laser in the air relies on the light being scattered by dust/water vapor. If there's enough dust/water in the air to scatter enough of the beam, then there's also probably enough dust/water in the intervening 12-15 miles to absorb the scatter. That's why I figure a cloud deck is the best - the scatter off the cloud deck would be huge, but the air below it may be relatively clear enough for the purple glow at the bottom of the cloud to get that far.
I'm not sure, but I gather that the "halo lighting" isn't really a thing that the fans go rabid for. "Light The Halo!" has never been a thing that I was aware of. And therein may lie a difference.
Angels do a Thing, everybody pretty much ignores it or at the very least doesn't make a deal about it, Angels just keep doing it because it's just an arbitrary, barely-noticed Thing.
For that matter, basically all baseball teams do a 7th inning stretch and play Take Me Out To The Ballgame...but it's just a Thing. 50% of the people wouldn't even notice if it got skipped - including me. The last baseball game I went to, the middle of the 7th rolled around and people started standing up and I was like, "Oh, yeah, we're all going to do the Thing." If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have noticed. Have I been to a baseball game where it DIDN'T happen? I don't know! Maybe, but I wouldn't have noticed. If the Angels didn't light up the halo one night following a win that I knew happened, would I (as a hypothetical SoCal resident) notice driving by on the 5 that it was dark? No chance.
Kings do a Thing that can hardly be ignored, market it to the roof (literally), the fans go crazy over it, they chant for it, they post about it incessantly on social media, Thing becomes a brand-centered culturally-significant Phenomenon. People go outside their homes miles away to see if they can get a glimpse of it (for the record, on a clear night from the fields north of Davis, no...maybe if there were some cloud cover to catch it). National media write about it. There are images, and memes. Crazy people go to the trouble of editing animated .gifs like this:
Or like this:
We are definitely dealing with two different classes of, for lack of a better category to fit them both, Tradition.
Clearly just a Thing can carry on for a long time. But it's pretty likely that a Phenomenon cannot be a Phenomenon forever. Humans have too much of a penchant for novelty for forever to happen. So then the question becomes, what happens when the Phenomenon is not a Phenomenon any more? One possibility is that it just becomes a Thing. But another possibility is that it begins to look old and dated in a way that something that started out as a Thing never does, and it has to be dropped. Which happens? I don't know. How long before it begins to come to a head? Well, I'd wager that it won't be before this Sacramento era's championship window is closed. Hopefully that's 10 years and 3 rings down the road. But for all we know (God forbid) it could be next year we're rebuilding again. But my guess is that The Beam is the symbol and identity of this upswing. The Webber/Peja/Divac years were the Glory Era whose gimmick was the Bench Mob. The Fox/Sabonis/Murray?? years are the Beam Team. After that, we probably let it go. My guess.
Angels do a Thing, everybody pretty much ignores it or at the very least doesn't make a deal about it, Angels just keep doing it because it's just an arbitrary, barely-noticed Thing.
For that matter, basically all baseball teams do a 7th inning stretch and play Take Me Out To The Ballgame...but it's just a Thing. 50% of the people wouldn't even notice if it got skipped - including me. The last baseball game I went to, the middle of the 7th rolled around and people started standing up and I was like, "Oh, yeah, we're all going to do the Thing." If it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have noticed. Have I been to a baseball game where it DIDN'T happen? I don't know! Maybe, but I wouldn't have noticed. If the Angels didn't light up the halo one night following a win that I knew happened, would I (as a hypothetical SoCal resident) notice driving by on the 5 that it was dark? No chance.
Kings do a Thing that can hardly be ignored, market it to the roof (literally), the fans go crazy over it, they chant for it, they post about it incessantly on social media, Thing becomes a brand-centered culturally-significant Phenomenon. People go outside their homes miles away to see if they can get a glimpse of it (for the record, on a clear night from the fields north of Davis, no...maybe if there were some cloud cover to catch it). National media write about it. There are images, and memes. Crazy people go to the trouble of editing animated .gifs like this:
Or like this:
We are definitely dealing with two different classes of, for lack of a better category to fit them both, Tradition.
Clearly just a Thing can carry on for a long time. But it's pretty likely that a Phenomenon cannot be a Phenomenon forever. Humans have too much of a penchant for novelty for forever to happen. So then the question becomes, what happens when the Phenomenon is not a Phenomenon any more? One possibility is that it just becomes a Thing. But another possibility is that it begins to look old and dated in a way that something that started out as a Thing never does, and it has to be dropped. Which happens? I don't know. How long before it begins to come to a head? Well, I'd wager that it won't be before this Sacramento era's championship window is closed. Hopefully that's 10 years and 3 rings down the road. But for all we know (God forbid) it could be next year we're rebuilding again. But my guess is that The Beam is the symbol and identity of this upswing. The Webber/Peja/Divac years were the Glory Era whose gimmick was the Bench Mob. The Fox/Sabonis/Murray?? years are the Beam Team. After that, we probably let it go. My guess.
I think this is the phenomenon vs. thing effect. Seems like people were more excited in the 70s than today. I have zero idea because the Angels are of zero interest to me, I just happened to stay next to the park the last time I visited my sister
In short: YES.
It's forever. Look, I know the offseason is long and we need things to discuss, but this is the one topic that should be a no brainer: the beam stays forever. You can't ever "uninstall" the beam. And you can't not light it after a win. It's probably the best marketing/fan rallying thing this franchise has ever created... since the beginning. I don't even need to find a corollary from another team or sport, it doesn't matter. You know a good thing when you see it. The beam stays.
It's forever. Look, I know the offseason is long and we need things to discuss, but this is the one topic that should be a no brainer: the beam stays forever. You can't ever "uninstall" the beam. And you can't not light it after a win. It's probably the best marketing/fan rallying thing this franchise has ever created... since the beginning. I don't even need to find a corollary from another team or sport, it doesn't matter. You know a good thing when you see it. The beam stays.
Taking this from wikipedia:
I think this is the phenomenon vs. thing effect. Seems like people were more excited in the 70s than today. I have zero idea because the Angels are of zero interest to me, I just happened to stay next to the park the last time I visited my sister
I think this is the phenomenon vs. thing effect. Seems like people were more excited in the 70s than today. I have zero idea because the Angels are of zero interest to me, I just happened to stay next to the park the last time I visited my sister
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/... for the beam,different ideas," Ranadive said.
