About

Underhand Knock is a shower thought referring to the act of knocking on a door without raising your hand. In January 2023, a Reddit post about underhand knocking went viral on /r/ShowerThoughts. That February, videos and memes wondering why people raise their hands to knock on doors went viral on TikTok and Twitter, inspiring further videos where people do the underhand knock, as well as further discussion on underhand knocks.

Origin

On January 2nd, 2023, Redditor frogKing_ posted to /r/showerthoughts,^[5] "You don’t have to raise your hand when knocking on the door," garnering over 16,000 upvotes in a month. On February 1st, 2023, TikToker^[1] @joetownsend9 posted a video captioned, "Me explaining that you don't have to raise your hand when knocking on someone's door," garnering over 9.1 million views in a week (shown below).

Spread

On February 2nd, 2023, Twitter^[2] user @cooIboobs posted a screenshot of @joetownsend9's video, garnering over 34,000 likes and 1,100 retweets in five days. Videos about underhand knocking became increasingly popular on TikTok over the following days. On February 4th, TikToker^[3] @nickfleetwood posted a video where he underhand knocks, garnering over 9.7 million views in three days (shown below, left). On February 5th, TikToker^[4] @topfloorsmoke posted a similar video, garnering over 212,000 views in two days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References