On Oct. 30, a Twitter user posted an innocuous meme poking fun at the fact that some Americans are notoriously bad at geography. Days later, the notion that an extra country exists attached to the Iberian peninsula is going viral and taking Europe by storm.
Fans of the Listenbourg meme have catapulted the fictional country into the spotlight, creating a robust lore around the fake nation. Social media accounts purporting to be official government channels for Listenbourg have cropped up and they’ve already released a national anthem.
Listenbourg was created by Twitter user Gaspardo when he shared a photoshopped map of Europe with an extra country tacked onto the northern border of Spain and Portugal. The country is shaded in green, implying it is an EU member.
Gaspardo captioned the post: “I’m sure Americans don’t even know the name of this country.”
Another user replied, “Who does not know Listenbourg?” — giving the fake country its name.
The meme quickly went viral in French-language social media circles and a TikTok hashtag for the nonexistent nation has garnered more than 77 million views. Viral videos purport to show people installing 5G cables in Listenbourg or offer “10 interesting facts” about the fake country.
There is an official Listenbourg government account on Twitter, as well as an account for the Ministry of Public Finance. Listenbourg’s Ministry of the Interior has even offered to answer any questions about visas and ID cards.
Listenbourg’s national anthem, posted by the fake government’s YouTube channel, has been listened to more than 53,000 times and there’s already a drill remix of it.
Participants in the meme are attempting to flesh out Listenbourg’s history, with detailed Twitter and Reddit threads. Listenbourg’s historians say the country dates back to the early 10th century when it was known as “Lisbourg.”
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One Twitter post claims that Listenbourg’s King Listen XV, who looks suspiciously like Henry Cavill, was the first Sun King, and went to war with France’s King Louis XIV for the title in 1661.
A pinned post on the country’s official subreddit writes that Listenbourg has faced repeated incursions by France and Spain.
“It was completely annexed from the south by Spain and from the north by France during the Listen war. Several revolts tried to free themselves,” reads the post. “A new revolt was triggered recently when Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic of France ordered, due to the war in Ukraine, to declare martial law in the region.”
According to the post, the country is now led by a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, Gaspard-Louis Napoleon, referring to Gaspardo, the meme’s originator, who has since dubbed himself the president of Listenbourg.
Social media accounts from major corporations have joined in on the Listenbourg fun. For example, Ryanair posted that it was opening up a new base in the fake country.
Amazon Prime Video France announced that a documentary on the history of Listenbourg would be released on Feb. 31.
But why has the Listenbourg meme skyrocketed to such virality? Euronews posits it’s because France and other European countries are fed up with being mislabelled, mispronounced, or otherwise misrepresented by foreign news outlets and dignitaries.
For instance, CNN came under fire in 2014 after it mistakenly placed the Ukrainian region of the Donbas in Pakistan — which isn’t even on the same continent.
Slovakia and Slovenia are so often confused for the other that Slovenia considered changing its flag in 2004.
During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush told a Slovak reporter that he learned a lot from his meeting with the foreign minister of Slovakia, saying, “I had a great meeting with him. It’s an exciting country” — the meeting he was referring to was actually with the prime minister of Slovenia.
Europe 1, America 0.
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