A cryptic demo campaign emerged over the last week that has reinvigorated the @Fall Out Boy fandom and begs the question: Is Pete Wentz playing us all?
Our resident Fall Out Boy expert, Amanda from Emo Kids Anonymous, takes you through the timeline of events in preparation for the big reveal...or not...that is coming on 3/17.
From Under the Cork Tree 20th Anniversary Falls Short of Expectations
May 3rd, 2025 marked the 20th anniversary of Fall Out Boy’s breakthrough, sophomore album From Under the Cork Tree (FUTCT), and the anniversary came and went with only a mea culpa from the band for not releasing or announcing anything grandiose and celebratory in time for the date. That would come months later when they would finally release special merch as well as deluxe anniversary vinyls and CDs. However, those anniversary albums were missing something FOB fans have been clamoring for: lost demos from the album. Many of them like “Hand of God” and “Star 67” have been circulated online through YouTube since the early 2000s, but others, like “We Don’t Take Hits, We Write Them,” could only ever be found as a garbled live performance of the song filmed most likely by someone’s old Canon digital camera.
When the FOB Archive Team sat down with Patrick in late 2025 for an in depth interview, they asked him directly about the FUTCT “lost” demos, and he claimed that they did look for them, but could not find the original demos anywhere. While he said they had been shopped around at the time to different labels, they had no copies themselves that they could find. That seemed to shut the book on the matter until….
The Ancient FOB Secret Order Surfaces
If you are a longtime fan of the band, or deeply rooted in the FOB lore, you know that the Secret Order is an exclusive fan club from the very early days of Fall Out Boy. The community lived on LiveJournal and one had to request access to get in. It has been closed for years and up to this point the only existence of the order survived through rare vintage t-shirts, of which there were only about 150.
So the fandom was shocked when one fan, username Sadiesknifetrick on Reddit, received a burnt CD in the mail on March 2nd that claimed it came from the Secret Order. The CD cover was a drawn/colored mock up of the FUTCT album art with the words “The Lost Songs” splattered across the front. On the inside, it contained instructions, written in serial killer note fashion:
Your Mission:
Download the files from this CD
Upload the files to Archive.org
Spread the Word
Good Luck!
The Secret Order
Image 1: Cover Art for Lost Songs CD
Image 2: CD Insert with Secret Order mission
The fan uploaded the files as asked and discovered that there were 16 demos on the CD that include coveted demos such as “Stereo,” “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark,” and “Get Me to a Hospital” (whose original title has long been debated as “I Liked You a Whole Lot Better Before You Became a Fucking Myspace Whore”). Once uploaded, she spread the word on Reddit and X, and then the frenzy began.
More CDs Uncovered and the Secret Order Speaks
Once the first CD was found and uploaded, more fans discovered that they, too, received a CD in the mail with the same order. Just like the first one, they were also numbered out of 10, implying that 10 copies were made and mailed. However, the day after the first one was posted, fans started finding copies of the CD in their local record stores.
The first couple were discovered in record stores in Chicago, FOB’s hometown, at Reckless Records and Shuga Records. These copies were markedly different from the mailed ones because they were unnumbered and the covers were black and white, not colored. Speculations rose on who could be behind the CDs: old members of the Secret Order, someone close to the band, Fall Out Boy themselves, Chris Gutierrez? (one of the B&W ones was discovered in a record store across from his Catcade establishment).
The answer to that question would soon become paramount when on March 4th, the “Secret Order” posted a message in the Review section of the Internet Archive files uploaded. Titled “Batta Batta Swing,” the message cryptically implies that they may or may not be the mastermind behind the CDs, and then goes on to relay that there were more CDs and not all of them may be the same and were delivered across state lines. They also said it’s not part of any campaign nor a game, but just a message to all the believers.
Image 3: First message from the Secret Order on Internet Archive
Additional messages started to appear, with increasingly cryptic messages and riddles that the fans started to dissect. All of these messages started to sound eerily familiar to fans who remember the pink seashells mailed to random fans right before Fall Out Boy announced So Much (for) Stardust, and years of LiveJournal entries and messages on FriendsorEnemies.com, and fan theories immediately zeroed in on Pete Wentz as the culprit.
Theories arose that there were a total of 55 CDs out there based on the numbers mentioned in the second post by the Secret Order. Others speculated that an announcement would be made on March 17th because there was also a mention of St. Patrick’s Day in the second message. The theories on the topic of the announcement ranges from an anniversary tour or show, new album announcement to the release of more FUTCT demos. While fans tried to answer the riddles, more fans received CDs in the mail and others found additional CDs in different record stores around the country from outside Austin, Texas to Boston, Columbus, and as of the writing of this article, Pittsburgh, PA.
Image 4: Second message from the Secret Order
The Secret Order Comes Clean and Infinity On High
On March 8th, a new YouTube channel was formed called FOB Demos where all of the songs were uploaded and several community posts were made. One of them led to a Google Drive one had to request access for and in that Drive was a Text File message. In the message, the author claims that fans were digging for answers in the wrong places with multiple references to sheep with wings, and going higher. Throughout the message there were randomly capitalized letters that when pulled out and put together spelled INFINITYYY leading fans to speculate that the answer had nothing to do with FUTCT at all but with Fall Out Boy’s third studio album that will reach its 20th anniversary on February 5, 2027.
Image 5: Google Drive message with possible Infinity On High references
And then metadata appeared in the demo “Austin, We Have a Problem,” on Internet Archive. In the metadata message, the author states that all the CDs have been distributed and says they are not “Your Fall Out Boy.” They claim they were just another fan who had these songs and wanted to share them with the world. They ask for forgiveness for mimicking the band members but said they had help along the way. They admit they never had any more demos other than the ones that they sent but there are more out there. They end the note with a jab at HeyChris, aka Chris Gutierrez, friend of the band, former Arma Angelus member, and general pot stirrer of ongoing FOB drama (see his AMA on IG where he hints at the possibility of Petekey being real in 2025).
Image 6: Metadata from “Austin, We Have a Problem”
Fan discussion continued to swirl around this new message that was also followed by another post on the FOB Demos YouTube channel that further sold the idea that the jig was up and that there would be no more news, no more surprises on the horizon.
Image 7: Final message from Secret Order on FOB Demo YouTube channel
Speculation and Wrap-Up
Many fans deny the authenticity in the final message's words, believing it is simply Pete Wentz trying to keep us off his scent, while others have accepted that the demo campaign was conducted by dedicated fans with the bands’ knowledge and permission. This fan/writer reached out to someone close to the band to see if they might be able to shed some light on the matter, however my source claims to have no knowledge and had been following the entire saga in real time along with the rest of us.
To further put the nail in the proverbial coffin, I also received a DM on Instagram a couple of days ago from someone who had seen my videos around the demos pop up on their FYP that is friends with one of the band members for the last 15 years and wanted to help me get some answers. I was skeptical at first when I received the message, but then the person sent me screenshots of their text message exchange with said band member. I won’t share those screenshots or the specific details here out of respect of privacy for the source and band, however the details all but confirmed for me a few things:
The source was legitimate,
The band was indeed not behind the demo disbursement, but were made aware of this campaign and
They were happy that fans were still excited about the music after all these years.
As the FUTCT demo saga comes to the close, the St. Patrick’s date still looms large. As I have analyzed all of the various CDs that have been discovered, the notes and messages, it seems to me more likely that it was a fan(s) all along behind it as there were some inconsistencies in the details - i.e. some colored/numbered CDs not being mailed but ending up in record stores instead, variation in some of the cover art, etc. - but more than that, if the band had their hands on these, I imagine their management and the label would have wanted them on the re-release as these days Fall Out Boy is a business first and foremost. Sending out mysterious pink seashells to announce a new album is one thing, but to low key release demos that could have ended up helping to sell more albums is a completely different thing. I would like to believe there is still a little bit of the Robin Hood spirit inside the band, but there are limits to it.
Regardless, this fan will still be waiting to see if anything pops up on St. Patrick’s Day, and you can be sure she’ll be posting about it on her socials as soon as it hits.