"Everyone Knows That" — Pink purple boombox radio on purple fur blanket in dim lighting

"Everyone Knows That"

2021lost media / viral audioclassic

Published October 23, 2026

"Everyone Knows That," also called "Ulterior Motives," is a 17-second mystery audio clip that user carl92 posted to WatZatSong in October 2021. For almost three years, Reddit sleuths and YouTube musicians chased its origin while fan recreations drew hundreds of thousands of views. In April 2024, Redditor south_pole_ball identified the track as a cue from the 1986 adult film Angels of Passion.

mystery memes lostwave memes audio memes subreddit origin memes delayed virality memes

Overview

Audio quality on the clip is poor, with vocals muddled enough that trackers could not agree on the chorus; the colloquial title "Everyone Knows That" came from one guess at the actual lyric7. On r/Lostwave, where the song sat as a long-running unsolved case, users compiled theories about decade, genre and possible artists in a rolling megathread10.

A side industry of fan reconstructions grew around the recording. YouTube musicians produced imagined full-length versions of the song, each guessing at verses and instrumentation6. Vocal isolations and cleaner remasters tried to tease the mystery lyrics out of the lo-fi source3. By February 2024, lost media explainers on TikTok drew audiences who had never heard of the case11.

Origin & Background

Platform
WatZatSong / Reddit / TikTok
Date
2021

On October 7, 2021, user carl92 uploaded the clip to the song-identification site WatZatSong under the title "Can you name this song?"1. The uploader wrote in a same-day comment that they could not place where the recording came from1. Three days later, YouTuber Jay Kay reposted the audio under the colloquial "Everyone Knows That" name, in a video that was later deleted but preserved in an archive4.

How It Spread

Redditor u/Null42x64 opened a r/Lostwave thread on October 13, 2021 asking the subreddit for help identifying the track2. In July 2022, u/Excellent_Ad_497 posted a running megathread that collected over 400 upvotes as more leads came in10. On June 27, 2022, YouTuber Tony St Pierre published an isolated-vocals version that reached over 30,000 views3. The dedicated subreddit r/everyoneknowsthat opened on June 19, 2023 to centralize the hunt7.

Recreations arrived in quick succession. Backr00mz posted a fuller imagined version on June 23, 2023 that drew over 44,000 views5, and Swofford's full-length imagining from June 25 reached over 170,000 views6. Unreal Aired's video essay in July 2023 topped 625,000 views8, and YourBoyDonald's October 2023 remaster collected over 113,000 views9.

The clip went viral on TikTok in early 2024. On February 6, 2024, @msloan98 posted a lost-media explainer that drew over 2.1 million views in 24 hours11, and @atlas_plus followed the same day with a clip at over 670,000 views12. In April 2024, Redditor south_pole_ball matched the audio to "Ulterior Motives," a cue from the 1986 adult film Angels of Passion, closing the three-year search7.

Timeline

How to Use This Meme

TikTokers typically overlay the audio on short videos that frame the song as lost media, with on-screen text describing the three-year hunt11. YouTube musicians have taken a different route, posting their own fuller imaginings of the track with invented verses and bridge sections6.

Frequently Asked Questions