Polandball (Meme)
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Polandball or Countryballs is a public domain geopolitical satirical art style, genre, and Internet meme created in the year 2009 on the site Krautchan.
History[edit | edit source]
Drawball.com incident[edit | edit source]
The roots of Polandball can be traced to an event dubbed a 'cyber-war' among Polish Internet users on a website called drawball.com, which occurred in August 2009. The website, which offers a larger, circular-shaped virtual canvas, allows internet users to draw what they want on the canvas, based upon what has previously been drawn by other users. The idea of drawing the Polish flag on the entire canvas rallied thousands of Polish Internet users together, and they were able to paint the entire canvas with a red top and white below, with the word "POLSKA" written in the middle. This coordination devolved into drawball's familiar chaos soon afterward when it was raided by 4chan to cover it with a giant swastika.[1]
Polandball's Beginnings[edit | edit source]
The beginnings of the actual meme began a month later, on Krautchan, a German-language imageboard website.
The first Polandball comics are attributed to a British user of Krautchan's English-speaking /int/ imageboard, dubbed "FALCO", who in September 2009 created the meme using Microsoft Paint to troll another user dubbed "Wojak", who is known for his drawings of a bald man that is nicknamed "Feels Guy". Wojak, a Polish -British frequenter of /int/, was speaking of his poor employee contributions and nationalism for his former country in a rambling style. Eventually, he began talking about how superior Polish women are to women from other countries. FALCO created the first Polandball comics to satirize this, along with several others later, and they became the most foundational stereotypes attributed to Polandball. This caught the interest of many users of the board, who then began spreading and imitating FALCO's comics across the internet. Russians espoused it the most, themselves creating their own stereotypes of drunken enjoyment and obsession with making fun of Poland. These stereotypes were placed into the character Russiaball. In a similar fashion, many other stereotypes began forming for the various other characters of Polandball.
Later History[edit | edit source]
Polandball, after being established by the community from Krautchan, began spreading their works across other websites in addition to cementing the popularity on their home website. On Krautchan, the meme became so widespread that the managers and moderators of the website established markers for the anonymous users' home countries using countryballs instead of flags. This later became a feature among many other /int/ boards on other imageboards and is also an optional feature.
Reddit[edit | edit source]
Another large Polandball community is headquartered on Reddit. On Reddit is a "subreddit" named eponymously after Polandball. It currently has 690.001 subscribers around the world, mostly from America and Europe. It is known for its strict rules for how comics and comments are posted and shared. Many regard the subreddit as a source for high-quality comics, while others criticize it for its heavy moderation or its tendency toward a more complex style of art. Controversial rules include the banning and temporary banning of certain jokes and a heavy comment policy that bans the use of any meme (including subtle meme references and even having a meme title for a comic).
Spin-offs[edit | edit source]
- Planetballs - Astronomy
- Companyballs - Companies
- Polcompballs - Ideologies
- Philosophyballs - Philosophies
- LGBallT - LGBTQ identities
- Chromeballs - Computer Software
- VideoGameballs - Video Games
- Bioballs - Biology
- Chemballs - Chemistry
Other varients[edit | edit source]
- Countryhumans - Human Version
- Polandarrow - Arrow version
Communities[edit | edit source]
- Polandball Wiki - (Dubious Main) Miraheze Wiki
- Polandball Fanon Wiki (Fanon content)
- Polandball Wiki - Fandom version of the first wiki (deleted)
- Ball Wiki - attempt to bring back Polandball on Fandom (deleted)
- The Neo Topicalballs Wiki - Second attempt (deleted)
- The Country Wiki - Third attempt (deleted)
- Globalballs Wiki - Fourth attempt (deleted)
- Neo-Globalballs Wiki - Fifth attempt (deleted)
- New PBall Wiki - 6th attempt and 2nd attempt to bring back Polandball on Fandom (deleted)
- Planetballs Fanon Wiki/Planetballs Anarchy Wiki - 7th attempt (deleted)
- Topicalballs - SkyWiki Wiki
- r/polandball - (Main) Reddit subreddit
- Polcompball Wiki - Miraheze wiki about Polcompballs
- Polcompball Anarchy Wiki - Like above but with Fictional Ideologies and some broader ideologies
- Mapping - Digitally drawn raster-based maps with talking nations, either telling a alternate future (Kyiv Mapping, Bace Bulgarian Mapper), alternate history (Brazilian Mapping, Dietsch) or just history (Holland Mapping)
Canons[edit | edit source]
Most of the modern and historical countries of the genre are presented as balls. However, Countryballs have developed canonswhich all artists should stick to. A number of countries are portrayed in comics in a special way. For example, Poland always depicted with an inverted flag, USA wear sunglasses, Singapore has a look triangle and it is called Tringapore (from English triangle — «triangle »). Israel and Jewish Autonomous Region have a shape hypercube. Kazakhstan depicted in form carpet or brick. U Serbia on the right eye a bandage with the image of the coat of arms on it. United Kingdom always wears cylinder hat and monocle. Nepal and Ohio depicted as a regular flag.
Authorship[edit | edit source]
Estimates and opinions[edit | edit source]
In 2017 Hong Kong magazine IB Herard noted that since its inception, Polandball has been distinguished by the fact that it covered various international problems in carefree and even humorous tones and that the seriousness of such events is still quite obvious. He also noted that, in addition, Polandball has «an amazing educational side », calling it «a lesson in world history and politics from time to time unsuccessful pun». IB Herard explains that the comic actually makes readers read about real historical events, and all this in order to understand the joke.
In 2018, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Socio-Political Disciplines Kazan Innovation University named after V. G. Timiryasova N. M. Gibadullina called Countryballs «one of the latest innovations in visual communication ». She noted that the primitiveness of the plot and images at the level dove allows you to attract a fairly wide audience and influence its consciousness. In her opinion, there is sufficient potential for manipulation in the Countryballs genre, given that the generation of zero years — is the generation of the so-called «visuals ». Gibadullina attributed the absence to the obvious shortcomings of Russian-language comics political correctness appeal to basic instincts human nature. She believes that Countryballs comics can be one of the tools for political socialization of youth and that, drawing attention to various problems of the country's domestic and foreign policy, the comic book forms a critical worldview and civic position young people, makes it possible to direct their protest and creative potential into a healthy course.
Polish researcher Anna Borkevich in her publication entitled «„ Polandball “: online memes on historical theory as an example of visualization of history » (floor. „Polandball ”: memy internetowe o tematyce historycznej jako przykład wizualizacji historii) reflected how through the cantribals one can imagine the important historical events for Europe and the world on the Internet. She referred to the eponymous character Polandball with which it is represented history of Poland. In her opinion, online comics «are modernizing the past or mixing it with elements of modern pop culture ». At the same time, she emphasized that the addressee will not even understand «the most modern means of communication » if he does not have basic knowledge of history.
In 2021, researcher Dolphin Ertanovska noted that «the idea of creating animated stories about countryballs is to present political, historical and social events in the crooked mirror », and that «sarcastic comments — the main feature of this international project ».
Negative[edit | edit source]
It is believed that the genre arose due to the appearance of many comics racist and xenophobic high stock character price vocabulary. In this regard, the administration of the Mixpix.in website, publishing comics on its pages, warns that this popular genre of folk art can be offensive to any country and contribute to inciting xenophobia.
Many users in the community consider the efforts needed to draw flags in compliance with the rules one of the most complex and time-consuming parts of creating Polandball content.
In 2014 on the project website Culture.plfunded the government of Poland, a detailed analysis was published (case study) Polandball meme, including the allegedly ironic drawing guide self-titled character. Project observer Culture.pl Wojciech Oleksyak noted that due to the fact that someone can create a Polandball comic, the existence of the meme has created new opportunities for people to express their personal views on race, religion and history. He further stated that comic subjects could be «rude, impolite, racist, insulting or simply stupid », while noting that politically incorrect comics adds attractiveness to comics meme.
Speaking about the topic European migration crisis in 2015, Czech researcher Ondrzej Prokhazka writes that «chronotopic representations of the migration crisis circulating in the Countryballs memes can be accepted as a game form of humorous expression (in accordance with the game premises stemming from the index orders of the Countryballs genre), and not as a serious form of political commentary lawyers». In 2018, in an interview with a Dutch magazine Digital magazine the observer stated that Countryballs «continues to inform us of the prevailing moods and views of „the network public “ in real time».
In a 2020 study, Prokhazka notes that the design of Countryballs memes is approaching expression bakhtinsky carnival sensations of the world », characterized by familiar and free interaction between different people. According to the researcher, the Countryballs genre provides sufficient resources for the embodiment of «idiotic » method of execution and expression «carnival sensation of the world ».
Swedish explorer Simon Torffvit believes that the Polandball meme often wears conservative and anti-Islamist-traditionalist character.
In 2021 and a
Polls[edit | edit source]
In the report of «News FM» post in LiveJournalin which readers were asked to list 5 images that come to mind when they think of Poland or the Poles. Five pages of comments illustrating the complex and often difficult historical ties between Russia and Poland included topics such as Lzhedmithrius I, «Tomek in the country of kangaroo » Polish writer Alfred Shklyarsky, television series «Four tankers and a dog», Russophobia and just the land of Polandball.
According to an in-depth interview conducted from May to June 2015 in Moscow (mainly), St. Petersburg, Novocherkassk, NoginskThe main comics containing the image of Russia were: Countryballs (91%) and «Khetaliya» (50%), 76% of respondents found these comics funny, 16% — not impressed and 8% — did not like.
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