The sound circulates online under its Chinese onomatopoeia title gu gu gu gu, a written form of repeated cooing, and is closely associated in searches with gu gu ga ga, a similar playful animal-like phrase. Short cooing clips like this spread through meme edits and soundboards because they need no context or language to understand. Creators reuse the clip as a shorthand for a dopey bird, a distracted friend, or a cute creature making noise for no reason, which keeps it useful across different trends.