The character of Poland, represented as a ball coloured
Countryballs, also known as Polandball, is an art style and internet meme used in online comic strips in which countries are typically personified as imperfect spherical characters (there are some exceptions, such as Germany, Nepal, Ghana, Singapore, Chile, who are not portrayed as balls) decorated with their country's flag. The characters often interact in broken English characterized with vocabularies of their national languages (e.g., France's broken English is interspersed with French words). The comics poke fun at national stereotypes, international relations and historical conflicts.
Background[]
Countryballs have their roots on drawball.com, a website that allowed internet users to draw whatever they want on a circular canvas called a "drawball". In August 2008, thousands of Polish netizens took over the entire drawball with an illustration of the Polish flag. The circular canvas constrained the flag in such a way that it became a literal "Poland ball". The beginning of the Countryballs format proper is credited to Falco, a British user on the German imageboard Krautchan.net who used Linux's Gimp software to create a meme of Wojak – a Polish Internet troll on the same board who contributed in broken English. After this, creating Countryballs cartoons became popular among other users on the board, particularly Russians.
Popularity[]
The style soon grew in popularity on the internet as a whole as a meme, having dedicated communities on platforms such as Reddit and MySpace. The popularity of the style has been attributed to the ability of the drawings to tell short stories of nations in a easily understandable fashion, often with a large amount of jokes and comical undertones, with the characterization of a group lending itself towards a short comic format.
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