Eroda

About

Eroda refers to tourisms ads for an apparent tropical island paradise called Eroda, a place that does not exist. The discovery of the ads on Twitter went viral, leading to speculation on Twitter and Reddit that the ads were perhaps a promotional Alternate Reality Campaign for a video game or a front for criminal activity. As researchers dug deeper, it was popularly theorized that Eroda was perhaps a promotional ARG for pop singer Harry Styles.

Origin

On November 21st, 2019, Twitter user @TheBrotographer^[1] reported that he had been seeing ads for a place called "Eroda." However, after investigating further, he realized Eroda does not exist (tweets shown below).

Spread

The tweets led to interest from Twitter users and Redditors. User @phuckas tweeted that they were "freaking out," feeling like they'd stumbled into an "ARG" (shown below, left). User @hardliqeur tweeted it's "the craziest thing" (shown below, right).

On Reddit, a subreddit devoted to the mystery started immediately, gaining over 1,600 subscribers in two days.^[2] The subreddit noticed some odd phrasings on the site's website.^[3] for example, under the "attractions" tab on the website, the description for "The Fisherman's Pub" reads, "Located on the corner of Cherry Street and Golden Way. The only rule of the bar? Don’t mention a pig in the pub." On YouTube, two days after Brotographer's thread, a video showing a tourism ad for "Eroda" was posted (shown below).

Harry Styles Speculation

Meanwhile, Twitter users began to believe that "Eroda" was connected to pop singer Harry Styles, who has a song called "Adore You" on his upcoming album ("Eroda" is "Adore" spelled backwards). Twitter user kissythetimes^[4] tweeted conjecture and evidence supporting the theory. For example, some of the pictures on the Eroda website are of places in Scotland where Styles was shooting a music video in August. Also, locations on the island such as "Golden Way" and "Cherry Street" may be related to other songs on the album "Golden" and "Cherry." TheBrotographer discovered that Eroda ads that appeared on Facebook were being targeted to people who had visited Harry Styles' website (shown below, left). Twitter user @ryannoyance^[6] posted a video demonstrating the connection (shown below, right). CapitalFM^[5] dove into the connections between Styles and Eroda.

Search Interest

External References