The bonk became a staple of internet humour through the Doge bonk meme, where a Shiba Inu holding a bat delivers a comic tap, often captioned as a trip to horny jail. The image and its matching thump spread across Reddit, Discord and TikTok edits in the early 2020s, and the sound outlived the original format as a general reaction. It now sits alongside the bruh sound and goofy ahh sounds in creator libraries, used whenever a light, cartoon punishment fits better than a harsh impact or a spoken punchline.