Social media is more effective than search engines in finding missing people and lost things. It has just ended a 17-year search for the title of “the most mysterious song on the internet.”

A German brother and sister sparked the mystery and search in 2007 when they asked audiophiles online to identify a song they had recorded on a cassette from the radio when they were teenagers, which they digitized and uploaded on the web.

When music databases yielded nothing, searchers deconstructed the sound to identify the instruments and the lead singer’s accent. The method could only identify its genre as “New Wave” or from the 1980s.

The interest and search for the title continued and expanded in 2019 when the song was uploaded on the online forum Reddit.

A Reddit subforum called “r/TheMysteriousSong” attracted tens of thousands of members, and the hunt was reported on in German media and beyond, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Last week, Reddit user “marijn1412” identified the song as “Subways of Your Mind” recorded by the defunct band FEX from Kiel 40 years ago.

Marijn1412 said he came across former FEX members while researching an event for up-and-coming bands that had been organized in the 1980s by a public broadcaster in northern Germany.

Ex-FEX Haedrich from Munich replied to a query from marijn1412 by sending him a version of the mystery song and revealing its long-sought title.

But not all lost things can be found, especially in the case of the supposed order by the Indian government banning the purchase or importation of the controversial book of fiction, “The Satanic Verses,” by British-American author Salman Rushdie.

In 2019, Sandipan Khan asked the court to allow him to buy the book from abroad, arguing against the ban issued by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 when the book was first published.

The Delhi High Court had told the respondents to produce the original order. Up till last week, or after five years, they could not find it.

“We have no other option except to presume that no such notification (ban) exists,” the court said in last week’s order that allows the importation of the book deemed blasphemous by Muslims, according to AFP.