Sanic comes from a badly drawn Sonic the Hedgehog doodle posted online in 2010 that became a shorthand for rushed, cursed fan art. The long scream version builds on that joke by taking a simple AAAA yell and extending it to around nineteen seconds, so the humour comes from duration as much as volume. It spread through meme edits and soundboards as a classic scream meme clip, paired with running characters, crashes and fake horror moments, and it remains popular because almost any minor problem can be made dramatic by letting it continue.