SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999, and SpongeBob's home life in Bikini Bottom made the foghorn alarm a recurring gag viewers instantly recognised. Online, distorted Spunch Bop edits renamed and warped familiar characters for deliberately low quality humour, and short clips from the show spread widely on meme soundboards and social video. The foghorn survived because it needs no context, reads immediately as a wake up or warning, and can turn an ordinary clip into a cartoonish emergency in just over two seconds.