The Sunday Read: “Why Do We Love TikTok Audio Memes? Call it ‘Brainfeel.’”

<p>“Nobody’s gonna know. They’re gonna know.”</p><p>If you’ve been on TikTok in the past year, you’re most likely familiar with these two sentences, first drolly uttered in a post by TikTok creator Chris Gleason in 2020. The post has become a hit and has been viewed more than 14 million times.</p><p>But the sound is more famous than the video.</p><p>When uploading a video to TikTok, the creator has the option to make that video’s audio a “sound” that other users can easily use in their own videos — lip-syncing to it, adding more noise on top of it or treating it like a soundtrack. Gleason’s sound has been used in at least 336,000 other videos, to humorous, dramatic and sometimes eerie effect.</p><p>The journalist Charlotte Shane delves into the world of repurposed sounds, exploring how TikTok and other apps have enabled, as she writes in her recent article for The Times, “cross-user riffing and engagement, like quote-tweeting for audio.” She also considers “what makes a sound compelling beyond musical qualities or linguistic meaning.”</p><p>While “brainfeel” may be an apt buzzword for the sensation audio memes elicit, Ms. Shane writes, it is more than a mere trend: We have entered the “era of the audio meme.”</p><p><i><strong>This story was written by Charlotte Shane and recorded by Audm</strong>. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, </i><a href="https://www.audm.com/?utm_source=nytmag&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=age_old_question_jabr" target="_blank"><i>download Audm for iPhone or Android</i></a><i>.</i></p>