The lyrics were inspired by an incident on The Phil Donahue Show, where Matt Reeves, who was close friends with producers Bryan Burk and Damon Lindelof, saw a female audience member yell out, "You all everybody, acting like it's the stupid people wearing expensive clothes."[7] The producers had an inside joke where they would say this quotation to each other. According to Burk, "At one point, in a delirious stupor, we realized we had said it so many times that that had to be the song."[6]