A photoshopped map showing Listenbourg – a fictional country deliberately inserted into the Iberian peninsula – appeared on social media and the joke took the world by storm.
"I'm sure Americans don't know the name of this country," wrote @gaspardo, a Twitter user, joking about the fact that Americans are said to have a marked lack of knowledge in geography.
Je suis sûr que les américains we know même pas le nom de ce pays ptdrrr pic.twitter.com/aecSupQdyU
— Gas??ardo (@gaspardooo) October 30, 2022
On the map, @gaspardo has photoshopped a piece of land above the border between Spain and Portugal, colored green to give the idea of ??a European Union state.
Another user immediately responded: "Who doesn't know Listenbourg?" — and thus a new meme was born.
Some took the game to another level: Here's the passport.
People on Reddit started making up seemingly real information: such as that Listenbourg has Formula 1's biggest prize and that its astronauts were part of a mission to the moon.
Another tweet claimed that Listenbourg's king, Listen XV, was, in fact, the first Sun King, who went to war against Louis XIV for the prestigious title in 1661.
On YouTube, on a supposed official account of the government of Listenbourg, the national anthem and flag appeared.
