Obituary

Screaming Goat was a video of a goat producing a sound that was less a bleat and more a full-throated existential scream, and the internet immediately understood it as the universal audio of frustration. It was dropped into videos of people missing buses, losing arguments, and stepping in things. The scream was the perfect sound effect because it was pure, wordless, and honest: this is what a breakdown sounds like in the animal kingdom. It died in 2015, outlived by every person who has ever screamed internally at their computer. The goat, one assumes, is fine now.

Portrait: Anil Öztas · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Born

2013

Died

2015

Cause of death

Died of a very loud complaint

Last sighting

A sound effect library, 2015

Resting place

Section F, Row 10

Category

audio