Earrape emerged online as a deliberately low-quality, over-amplified style of meme audio, popular on video platforms and Discord calls where creators compete to make the loudest, most distorted sound possible. The humour comes from breaking normal audio expectations, especially when a calm clip suddenly becomes painfully loud. Despite warnings about volume, earrape clips remain a staple of prank edits, reaction videos and meme compilations because the shock is instantly recognisable, easy to reuse and still funny when used sparingly.