Laugh tracks became a staple of American television in the 1950s, when sound engineer Charley Douglass created the Laff Box to sweeten sitcoms recorded without a live audience. Shows filmed on sound stages used canned laughter to cue viewers at home when to laugh and to smooth edits between takes. The technique defined multi camera sitcoms for decades and later survived as parody. Online, creators reuse the same crowd reaction, alongside other laughter clips like the baby laughing meme, to recreate retro TV humour or mock it.