Ben comes from Talking Ben the Dog, a mobile app released by Outfit7 in 2011 as part of the Talking Tom and Friends series. In the app the dog repeats what users say, answers phone calls and reacts with laughs and grunts. Short clips of his voice spread first through YouTube edits and later TikTok and Discord memes, where the laugh became shorthand for finding something stupidly funny. It sits alongside other reaction laughs like the baby laughing meme and the cat laugh meme, and remains popular because it is instant, familiar and unmistakably sarcastic.