You hear a funny sound on TikTok. A week later it is everywhere.
People use it in gaming clips, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Discord soundboards, Twitch streams, and thousands of memes. Eventually, the sound becomes so common that it almost feels like it belongs to the internet.
But does it?
In many cases, somebody still owns the original audio, video, song, or recording behind a meme sound.
So what actually happens when a sound becomes a meme, and who owns it?
This article focuses mainly on U.S. copyright law. Copyright rules can be different in other countries.
Going Viral Does Not Remove Copyright
One of the biggest misconceptions about memes is that something becomes free to use once enough people have shared it.
That is not how copyright works.
Under U.S. copyright law, copyright generally exists automatically when someone creates an original work and records or fixes it in some form.
That could include:
• An audio recording
• A YouTube video
• A comedy sketch
• A song
• A movie
• A podcast
• A livestream recording
• An original sound effect
Under U.S. copyright law, an original work is generally protected by copyright as soon as it is created and fixed in a tangible form.
A million TikTok views do not suddenly move that work into the public domain.
The Fahhh meme is a good example.
Fahhh: When the Creator Becomes the Meme
The Fahhh meme sound comes from creator Taileons.
Taileons recorded the exaggerated “Fahhh” reaction and regularly used it in his own content before other creators started remixing it. By late 2025, the sound had exploded across TikTok through gaming edits, football videos, reenactments, and reaction memes.
Today, you might hear Fahhh without ever seeing Taileons himself.
That does not mean the original recording appeared from nowhere.
Someone created it.
This is an important distinction when talking about meme ownership. The internet can turn a small creator’s recording into a global meme, while the original work can still have a creator behind it.
Emotional Damage: What If the Meme Comes From a Video?
Another good example is Emotional Damage.
The famous sound comes from comedian Steven He’s 2021 YouTube sketch “When ‘Asian’ Is a Difficulty Mode.”
During the sketch, Steven reacts to what happens in the fictional game by shouting:
“Emotional damage!”
People started cutting that moment out of the video and using it as a reaction sound.
Soon, you did not need to have watched the original Steven He video to understand the joke.
This is where meme copyright becomes interesting.
The meme sound originally comes from a larger audiovisual work. Cutting a few seconds out of a YouTube video does not automatically make those seconds ownerless.
A video can contain copyrighted performances, dialogue, music, recordings, and other creative elements.
The U.S. Copyright Office provides separate guidance for audiovisual works and sound recordings because copyright can apply differently depending on what was originally created.
For meme culture, the important part is simple:
A sound being separated from its original video does not automatically remove the rights connected to the original work.
Oh No: One Meme Sound Can Have Multiple Copyrights
Music makes meme sounds even more interesting.
The viral Oh No sound became huge on TikTok, especially in videos where something is clearly about to go terribly wrong.
The popular version comes from the song “Oh No” by Capone, which itself uses material from “Remember (Walking in the Sand)” by The Shangri-Las.
This is a useful example because music can have multiple layers of copyright.
Under U.S. copyright law, a musical composition and a sound recording are generally treated as separate works.
• The composition covers things such as the music and lyrics.
• The sound recording covers a particular recorded performance of that music.
So when somebody takes part of a song and turns it into a meme sound, there may be more going on legally than simply asking who owns the MP3 file.
The U.S. Copyright Office explains this distinction in its guidance on musical compositions and sound recordings.
This also shows why remix culture can become complicated very quickly.
One five-second meme could involve a recording, a composition, a remix, and a new video built around all of them.
Why Are You Running?: Movie Dialogue Can Become a Meme Too
You have probably heard:
“Why are you running? Why are you running?”
The Why Are You Running? meme originated from a scene in the Nigerian movie Pretty Liars 1.
The scene was repeatedly clipped, reposted, remixed, and eventually became deeply connected with Vine, YouTube memes, and later the Ugandan Knuckles meme.
Today, many people recognize the audio without knowing anything about the movie it came from.
That does not change where the sound originated.
Movie dialogue is part of a larger audiovisual production. Taking a recognizable piece of dialogue from a movie and turning it into a meme does not automatically make the original movie footage or audio public domain.
Again, internet culture and copyright ownership are two different things.
Something can become part of meme culture while still originating from copyrighted material.
Does the Person Who Makes the Meme Own It?
Now imagine you take the Fahhh sound and create a completely new video around it.
• You film yourself.
• You write the joke.
• You edit the video.
• You create animations.
• You add subtitles.
• You might own original creative parts of your new video.
But that does not necessarily mean you suddenly own the original Fahhh recording too.
Copyright can exist in layers.
A meme could potentially contain:
• Someone else’s original sound
• Your original video
• Your editing
• Your graphics
• Another person’s music
• Someone else’s movie footage
Each piece can have a different origin.
This is why asking “Who owns this meme?” can sometimes have several answers.
What About Remixes?
Remixing is at the heart of meme culture.
• Someone takes Fahhh and turns it into a song.
• Someone adds Emotional Damage to another video.
• Someone speeds up Oh No.
• Someone combines five different meme sounds into one absurd TikTok edit.
U.S. copyright law recognizes something called a derivative work, which is a new work based on or incorporating pre-existing material.
The Copyright Office also specifically discusses derivative sound recordings, including recordings where existing sounds have been rearranged, remixed, or otherwise changed.
Creating something new does not necessarily erase the copyright in the material you started with.
A remix can contain new creative work while still incorporating somebody else’s copyrighted material.
Are Meme Sounds Fair Use?
This is probably the biggest question.
People often say:
“It’s a meme, so it’s fair use.”
That is not an actual rule.
In the United States, fair use can allow copyrighted material to be used without permission in certain situations, but whether something qualifies depends on the circumstances.
Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act identifies four factors that courts consider.
They include:
• The purpose and character of the new use
• The nature of the copyrighted work
• How much of the original work was used
• The effect on the potential market for the original
Uses involving commentary, criticism, parody, research, or other transformative purposes may have stronger fair use arguments.
But there is no automatic “meme exception” to copyright.
The U.S. Copyright Office makes this particularly clear in its Fair Use Index. Fair use decisions depend on the facts of each individual case.
Does Making a Meme Transform the Original?
Sometimes it can.
Imagine someone uses Emotional Damage at the end of a completely new comedy video.
The purpose of that small clip might be very different from its original purpose inside Steven He’s sketch.
That difference can be relevant when considering fair use.
But simply adding text, changing the pitch, speeding something up, or putting it over another video does not automatically guarantee fair use.
There is no magic amount of editing that makes copyright disappear.
This is another reason you should be careful with statements such as:
“I changed it, so I own it now.”
Copyright does not work that simply.
What If the Meme Sound Is Only Two Seconds Long?
Meme sounds are often extremely short.
That creates another common misconception:
“It’s only two seconds, so copyright doesn’t apply.”
There is no universal rule in U.S. copyright law saying that using less than a certain number of seconds is automatically allowed.
Length can matter when evaluating a particular use, especially under the fair use analysis, but there is no simple five-second, ten-second, or thirty-second rule that automatically makes copying legal.
For memes, context matters.
Using a tiny reaction sound in a transformative comedy video can raise very different questions from taking the most recognizable part of a song and selling it as your own recording.
What About Soundboards?
Soundboards make all of this even more interesting.
A soundboard can bring together hundreds of sounds from completely different parts of internet culture.
You might have:
• Fahhh
• Emotional Damage
• Oh No
• Why Are You Running?
• Screaming Chicken
• Anime sounds
• Movie quotes
• Gaming sounds
• Original creator sounds
Every sound can have its own history.
On Voicy, users can discover sounds, create soundboards, upload audio, and organize their favorite meme sounds.
But putting ten sounds together on one soundboard does not mean all ten suddenly have the same copyright owner.
The rights connected to each sound depend on where that sound originally came from.
Does Giving the Creator Credit Make It Okay?
Giving credit is a good thing.
It can help people discover the person behind a meme and understand where a sound actually came from.
But credit and copyright permission are not the same thing.
Writing:
“Credit to Steven He”
does not automatically give somebody permission to do anything they want with the Emotional Damage recording.
Likewise, removing a username, watermark, or creator attribution does not remove copyright.
Credit answers:
“Who made this?”
Permission answers:
“Am I allowed to use this?”
Those are different questions.
What About Commercial Use?
This is where you should be especially careful.
There is a big practical difference between sending Fahhh to your friend on Discord and using somebody else’s sound in a commercial advertising campaign.
Commercial use is also one of the things courts can consider as part of a fair use analysis, although being commercial does not automatically mean something cannot be fair use.
If you are planning to use a viral meme sound in advertising, merchandise, a commercial game, a paid product, or another major commercial project, finding out where the sound originated becomes much more important.
The fact that everyone uses a sound on TikTok does not necessarily mean businesses can use it however they want.
So Who Owns a Meme Sound?
Usually, the best place to start is with the original source.
• Did the sound come from a creator like Fahhh?
• A YouTube sketch like Emotional Damage?
• A song like Oh No?
• A movie like Why Are You Running?
That original source tells you a lot about what rights might exist.
Then the internet does what it does best.
• People remix it.
• They crop it.
• They pitch-shift it.
• They combine it with another meme.
• Someone uses it in a gaming video.
• Someone puts it on a soundboard.
• Someone else creates a remix of the remix.
Eventually, millions of people recognize a sound that started with one creator, recording, song, or video.
That is part of what makes meme sounds so fascinating.
They can feel like they belong to the entire internet while still having a real origin and, in many cases, real copyright owners behind them.
So the next time you hear a sound everywhere online, ask yourself one question:
Where did this meme actually come from?
