The 'Australia Is Not Real' meme stems from a viral 2017 Facebook post that jokingly claimed the entire continent of Australia was a massive hoax created by the British government. According to the lore, the millions of people living there are actually paid actors or computer-generated images, and flights to the country are just elaborate ruses that land in South America. The meme gained massive traction on platforms like Reddit and Tumblr, where it evolved into a satirical take on Flat Earth theories and other internet conspiracies. It is frequently used to explain away the continent's bizarre wildlife and extreme weather as 'bad CGI' or 'scripted events' by the government handlers.