The stunning Greek island of Amorgos was recently trending online, but not for its rugged natural beauty and secluded beaches, for its name. It’s known on the internet as the “25th island of Greece.”
Searches for the Cycladic island have surged, and it has nothing to do with summer holiday bookings or a new wave of interest in the Greek islands.
No, Amorgos had become a meme due to its links with an incredibly popular video game.
After noticing references to Amorgos everywhere, Internet sleuths have linked the searches to a meme raging across Twitter in which users urge each other to search for “the 25th island of Greece.”
On the list of Greek islands by size, Amorgos is ranked 25th. The meme is a play on the name “Amorgos,” which users think resembles the name of the extremely popular game “Among Us.”
Amorgos trending because it sounds like “Among Us”
Although released in 2018, “Among Us” took the world by storm last spring, when those in quarantine and lockdown were searching for new games and activities to cure their boredom, and remains quite popular to this day.
The game involves a group of spacemen moving around a rocket ship doing menial tasks. There is, however, an imposter among the crew, set out to sabotage the safety of the ship and kill the members on board.
Each time a player dies, the whole group, which can be full of strangers from around the world, convenes to discuss who they believe the imposter is, and then vote them out.
The imposter must try to deceive the rest of the group, by flying under the radar or casting blame on another player.
This continues until the imposter kills all the other crew members or is found out and voted off the ship.
The widespread popularity of the game has caused social media users to see references to it in their daily lives, whether it be words that remind them of its name, or shapes that recall the iconic figures of the crew members.
The 25th island of Greece
Amorgos became a tourist attraction in the late 1980’s when the island was the backdrop for the film “The Big Blue.”
The film, which became one of France’s most commercially successful films when it was released in 1988, is about a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century.
Over three decades after “The Big Blue,” Amorgos in 2020 was again set as the alluring background of a new international co-production. German director/scriptwriter Nana Neul’s feature length movie “Töchter” (Daughters), based on the best-selling novel by Lucy Fricke, was the basis of that film. This was one of the first international co-productions to resume after the first lockdown in Greece.
Tourism is increasing slowly, although the island’s geographical features prevent mass tourism. It is accessible only by boat. The three main tourist accommodations are located in Katapola, Aegiali and Chora.
Chora, the capital, is situated in the interior of Amorgos, at an altitude of 350 meters, (1,148 feet) near the center of the island. It is a protected village, with white Cycladic houses, narrow alleys and churches. Chora surrounds the castle, which was built in the 13th century.
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