The bonk became a staple of meme editing as short form video grew, helped by the doge bonk meme where a Shiba Inu hits another character with a bat for saying something out of line. From there the sound spread across gaming clips, anime edits and reaction posts as a universal shorthand for a light, non serious punishment. Its cartoon roots go back much further to slapstick animation, but the online version stays short and dry so it can be looped, stacked or cut into almost any joke.