The boing has long been a staple of slapstick cartoons, where a spring sound made exaggerated movement feel instantly funny without dialogue. As short-form video and meme editing grew, creators lifted that same elastic twang for jumps, falls and surprise reactions, because viewers recognise it in less than a second. It survives today not as a novelty but as shorthand for cartoon physics, a quick audio cue that tells an audience a moment is meant to be silly rather than serious, and it works across languages because the joke is in the sound itself.