Ameristralia

About

Ameristralia is an Internet slang term that was coined on Reddit to celebrate the symbiotic relationship between American and Australian Redditors on the site’s front page, mainly due to their opposite time zones. The term is a portmanteau of America and Australia.

Origin

On April 22nd, Redditor realms_board submitted a post titled “How I picture the Australians coming on to reddit” to /r/Funny,^[16] suggesting that Australian Redditors tend to take over the posts submitted by American Redditors due to differences in time zones. By the next day, the image had accrued more than 23,000 upvotes, 1,300 points and nearly 900 comments.

On April 23rd, 2013, Redditor lefoss submitted an image post titled “Team Ameristralia, with our powers combined….” to /r/AdviceAnimals,^[1] which depicted a koala riding an eagle with the caption “We will rule Reddit by day and by night.” Within 19 hours, the post accrued more than 21,000 upvotes, 1,100 comments and nearly 1,700 points overall. Prior to this post, the portmanteau had been used in a discussion thread about American expats living in Australia on the Family Based Immigration forums^[2] in December 2010.

Spread

Within an hour after the first appearance of the advice animal, Redditor Badfickle created the subreddit /r/Ameristralia,^[3] gaining more than 3,400 subscribers within 18 hours. Shortly after the subreddit was created, another Redditor by the name of Ameristralia^[4] began posting in related threads across the site. Around the same time, Redditor stunami submitted the first image macro commentary on the intercontinental alliance from the perspective of a third-party state, which illustrated Kim Jong Un’s dismay^[5] over not being included. However, the post went relatively unnoticed, receiving 6 upvotes.

In less than 24 hours, more than 300 Ameristralia-related threads^[6] were posted on numerous subreddits, including commentaries from Redditors residing in other countries such as Sweden^[10] and Canada^[11] (shown below). At least five of these posts, including ones in /r/Funny^[7], /r/MURICA^[8] and /r/AdviceAnimals^[9], reached the front page with more than 1,000 points overall. Additionally, the subreddit /r/NewZanada^[12] launched to celebrate a similar coalition of New Zealand and Canada.