How an Indonesian onomatopoeia became a dance-music sample and a meme

Om Telolet Om. That three-word phrase is currently sprinkled across the Twitter mentions and Instagram comments of celebrities around the word. But what does it mean?As Billboard points out, Om Telolet Om doesn’t quite mean anything. It’s a noise. The onomatopoeia was created by kids in Indonesia. “Telolet” is meant to represent the sound city buses make when they honk: it’s a complex, carnival-like beep. And “Om” is an Indonesian word that loosely trans