Three British lads with a thirst for adventure (as well as for booze and attention, it seems) set out last weekend in search of some fun after partying all night in Cyprus.

According to the men, as of two days ago, fun was found in spades — until they wound up on a boat bound for Syria, hungover, terrified and without Wi-Fi.

"We ended up in some f--king place called Tartus or something and literally had no idea where this f--king place was," said 19-year-old Alex McCormick to News.com.au on Tuesday, referring to Syria's second-largest port city on the Mediterranean coast.

McCormick, who reportedly works as a club promoter in the Cypriot resort town of Ayia Napa, also told the news outlet that he and his friends almost defecated in their pants when Russian military officers arrived and took them away for questioning.

As it turns out though, he was lying — and not just with the "almost" part of that sentence above.

McCormick and his buddies, Lewis Ellis, 25, and James Wallman, 23, faked the entire thing. They did not drunkenly "blag [their] way onto a random boat," spend nine hours at sea with men who shouted at them in a foreign language, or pose for selfies and eat stew with the Russian soldiers who detained them.

It's not even clear at this point if the British men, who all claim to be working at nightclubs in Ayia Napa, did anything but go to bed after partying on Sunday night.

What is clear, based on what they're saying now, is that the guys are delighted with what their fake words and elaborately staged Snapchat photos accomplished.

"We have literally trolled the world media and we are so proud of ourselves," Ellis, who runs a YouTube channel devoted to pranks, told the Independent on Wednesday. "They report bollocks all the time and people never check the facts. As soon as they posted it that was it — it went viral."

Viral might be a stretch, but a solid handful of mainstream media outlets and reporters, including CBC's Derek Stoffel, did pick up the story, particularly in the U.K.

Idiotically, idiotic Brits abroad make up idiotic Syria story. The laughs we had..... <a href="https://t.co/jYrEN317Z1">https://t.co/jYrEN317Z1</a> —@jondonnisonbbc

On Wednesday morning, screenshots from Ellis's personal Facebook page began circulating on Twitter.

The University of Chester marketing grad has been delightedly sharing links to news articles about the story with comments like "hahahaha" and "yesssss" since they started bubbling up, and in the comments section of one such post he appeared to admit the hoax.

"Hahaha what a prank," he wrote to a friend, who replied, "So u didn't get on wrong boat?"

"Naaa we just made it up for fun," typed Ellis.

A separate status update on Wednesday was even more blatant.

"Okay so we trolled the world … agreed with Alex McCormick thank you media outlets you've made great victims. James Wallman … just goes to show how often people report without checking facts."

(Lewis Ellis/Facebook)

If the trio's intention was to teach journalists a lesson, it may have worked on some level for those reporters who took the time to speak with them, transcribe their words, process their images, write out full articles, and trust them enough to tell their story.

Those resources could very well have been devoted to other Syria-related news stories, after all — like those of the more than 8,000 refugees who have died since 2014 while trying to cross the very same sea that Ellis, McCormick and Wallman used for prank fodder.