The Story Behind the Vine Boom Meme Sound

It is one deep, echoing boom — barely a second of sound — and it can turn an ordinary clip into a punchline. This is the story of the Vine Boom meme sound: where the impact came from, how it escaped into short videos, and why editors still drop it in right after a reveal, a confession, or a bad decision.

Where “Vine Boom” comes from

Before it had a name, the boom was library material. On November 7, 2012, YouTuber Bluezone Corporation posted a video titled “Industrial Samples and Impacts, Boom Sound Effects, Metallic Sounds for Trailers, Film and More.” The first sound effect in that video is the echoing boom now known as the Vine Boom. On their website, the sound pack is described as professional metal sounds — booms, heavy impacts, industrial clangs, cracks and drops — made with various objects in different industrial environments, with reverb to give a wide choice of hitting and falling metal sounds. Which object made this particular boom is not stated, and that anonymity helps it: the hit could be a door, a machine, or anything heavy meeting anything else.

How it became a sound

Know Your Meme traces the earliest known use of the effect in videos to April 2014, when Vine star King Bach began using it in his videos for dramatic effect — one of the earliest uses was posted to Vine on April 10, 2014. Other creators copied the timing: setup, pause, boom. On May 9, 2016, YouTuber Cancerous Memes uploaded an isolated version of the sound, using Bach’s face for the thumbnail, which made the effect easy for anyone to lift. The most popular upload followed on October 19, 2017, and gained over 1.4 million views in less than four years. Vine itself closed, but the boom kept moving: by 2020 it was increasingly popular in ironic memes and 21st Century Humor edits, becoming a staple of the genre by 2021, in part through its use in Amogus memes. In March 2021, a distorted version was paired with the Rock’s Eyebrow Raise video, giving the old boom a new face and another long run.

How editors use it

• The reveal: someone says the quiet part out loud, the picture cuts or zooms, and the boom lands.
• The shock beat: a stare, a raised eyebrow, or a frozen frame gets one boom instead of an explanation.
• The escalation: the same boom repeats, sometimes distorted, as a situation gets worse or more absurd.
• The ironic cut: a completely ordinary moment is treated like a trailer climax, with the boom doing all the drama.

Use one clean hit and let the echo finish. The boom works because it is mostly empty space after the impact — trim that tail too early, talk over it, or stack it under music and the joke loses its weight.

Use this sound in the app: open this sound in the Green Screen Memes app and drop it over your own photo or video.

Get the sound

Download the sound free on Meme Sound Effects: Vine Boom — Meme Sound Effect.

More like this: browse the Meme Soundboard or the Sound Buttons chart.