PewDiePie, the online name of Swedish creator Felix Kjellberg, built one of YouTube's largest audiences with gaming and reaction videos in the 2010s. This laugh comes from his reaction to a paralyzed squirrel clip, a moment fans clipped and reposted as a standalone meme sound. It spread across edits alongside other reaction laughs like the baby laughing meme and the cat laugh meme, becoming shorthand for finding something helplessly funny. Creators still reuse it because his laugh is instantly recognizable even without video.