The phrase spread in 2024 through short videos parodying Chinese tiny-apartment renovation tutorials, where a narrator calmly builds beds and storage from galvanized square steel in rooms barely larger than a closet. Clips were remixed on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, with users quoting the material list and recreating the build in games and real workshops. Its appeal lies in the specific, repetitive wording and the borrowed-from-aunt backstory, which turned a mundane construction term into a recognizable shorthand for overengineered small-space solutions online.