Saturday, March 25, 2017

yes, virginia, there is an australia

I've gotten intrigued by this whole viral thing about how some Swedish FaceBook star* named Shelley Floryd believes that Australia doesn't exist.

I saw an article, which I shared, commenting that that would explain Air Supply. On someone else's post I commented that I once knew someone who said he was "moving to Australia." I never saw him again.

The theory, as explained here, is that the British made up Australia as a cover so they could just drown their prisoners in the ocean. Makes sense to me, and I wouldn't put it past the gummint to perpetrate such an elaborate hoax -- if not for the fact that they could never pull it off.

But I wasn't satisfied with seeing the article. I wanted to get back to primary sources. The video in the article I linked above referred to Floryd as an experimental Youtuber, so I went to Youtube. Alas, she only has a few videos up. They date back a few years, and none of them are about Australia being a hoax. I did find some other such videos -- more on them later.

Before I go on, let me note for the record that Floryd does not actually believe it. See the picture from her FaceBook page.

Based on that, and a couple other posts on her Facebook page, it seems clear that this was part of a plot to get to 10,000 followers.  So maybe I shouldn't do this blogpost, which is only serving to give her more publicity. Awww, who am I kidding? Nobody reads this blog, so I can post this without helping her at all.

Anyway, I tried to scroll down her Facebook page to find the original post. I gave up after scrolling down for what seemed like forever. She had lots of links to mainstream media articles about her thinking that Australia is fake, and a few posts along the lines of "Remember -- Australia is fake." And, of course, lots of non-Australia-related stuff. Including a long video of her in a sheer negligee and sports jacket sitting -- it looks like she's on a toilet but the camera angle is, thankfully, high enough that I can't be sure -- and reading from a Harry Potter book.

Above, I promised to get to the other Youtube videos that claimed that Australia is a hoax. This is the one that caught my attention:

It's hard to know if this is real or not. She seems sincere and all. But, but...the stupid! She also posted a bunch of other stupid videos. In one, called "England is Confusing," she talks about the language barrier between England and the US. 

If she's not incredibly stupid, then she's a great actor. On the other hand, my whole Joey Thumpe persona was pretty stupid. I wonder if anyone fell for it...




*I should admit here that I didn't even know there was such a thing as a Facebook "star." But what do I know? I still have trouble navigating the intertubes.

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