The sting comes from live comedy drumming in vaudeville and burlesque, where house drummers punctuated performers jokes with a rimshot and cymbal. Often called a sting or rimshot, the ba dum tiss pattern became a staple of stand-up clubs, television comedy and cartoon sound effects libraries during the twentieth century. As short clips moved online it became a universal audio shorthand for a punchline, especially a corny one, and remains widely sampled in videos, streams and meme edits today.