Fire alarms became a staple of online comedy as soon as phone cameras made impromptu pranks easy to film, with uploaders blasting the tone from a speaker to clear a room on camera. The clip works because everyone knows the drill: when this sound starts, you stop what you are doing and move. It sits alongside other panic-adjacent sounds like a scream meme or a game-show buzzer, all of which trade on the same instant jolt of alarm. Because it reads as an emergency in under a second, it remains a reliable opener for prank and fail content.