Among Us was released by InnerSloth in 2018 and exploded in popularity in 2020, turning its crewmates, tasks and emergency meetings into a shared online language. The bass boosted version is a fan made edit that pushes the game's tense low end into a single meme sting, similar in use to a vine boom. It spread through gaming edits, TikTok and YouTube Shorts where sus became shorthand for anything suspicious. It is still used because one hit instantly signals doubt, accusation or a bad lie without needing any explanation.