Like earworms, these quips are so mentally sticky that it takes just a few listens for your mind to latch onto them and never let go. The famous Wilhelm Scream has since appeared in more than 100 movies where it has become an inside joke for sound engineers and film fans. An audio meme's most crucial quality though is the ability to instantly excite us, to make us think upon the first listen, I need to hear that again.
“Nobody’s gonna know. They’re gonna know.”
If you’ve been on TikTok in the past year, you’re most likely familiar with these two sentences, first drolly uttered in a post by TikTok creator Chris Gleason in 2020. The post has become a hit and has been viewed more than 14 million times.
But the sound is more famous than the video.
When uploading a video to TikTok, the creator has the option to make that video’s audio a “sound” that other users can easily use in their own videos — lip-syncing to it, adding more noise on top of it or treating it like a soundtrack. Gleason’s sound has been used in at least 336,000 other videos, to humorous, dramatic and sometimes eerie effect.
The journalist Charlotte Shane delves into the world of repurposed sounds, exploring how TikTok and other apps have enabled, as she writes in her recent article for The Times, “cross-user riffing and engagement, like quote-tweeting for audio.” She also considers “what makes a sound compelling beyond musical qualities or linguistic meaning.”
While “brainfeel” may be an apt buzzword for the sensation audio memes elicit, Ms. Shane writes, it is more than a mere trend: We have entered the “era of the audio meme.”
This story was written by Charlotte Shane and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.