One moderator states that ‘every major real life event causes a wave of comics on the topic’. This is supported in Whitney Philips’ While I will contest labelling countryball comics as memes below, the crudely drawn comics fit comfortably within a wave of both politically motivated and meme-focused internet users.

3,154 talking about this. Less straight-forward however, is Shifman’s claim that internet memes are now used as vectors for political agency, stating that ‘meme creation is an accessible, cheap, and enjoyable route for voicing one’s political opinions’.

Reddit’s r/all page overtly displays the intertwining of memes and politics, as one is likely to stumble upon on subreddits filled with political memes like r/PoliticalHumor or r/FULLCOMMUNISM. Regardless, the system should outlive its participants: the affordances of Reddit, such as featuring tools to ban the submissions, comments and redditors that do not conform to subreddit-rules, should allow the moderators to maintain the coherence of both the community and the content that has come to define r/polandball. Don’t quote me on that we could be down to one or none now. For example: jokes about The many different Polandball-related communities across the internet often put in place rules and social stigmas so that the foundation and principles of the meme remain with it. Reddit is growing in general, but the spike in traffic on r/polandball remains notable. Nevertheless, it stuck and became a trademark usually frowned upon by Polish anons – and thus a surefire means to - Countryballs including Poland have no limbs, pupils, eyebrows or mouth.- Countryballs cannot into proper English (which kind of resembles the - Countryballs from east Asian countries have small eyes.Although not mandatory, specific countryballs have personalities that are reflective of stereotypes on how the citizens of a country are displayed on the - The United States are displayed as egocentric people who do not understand anything that happens outside their own border, and who always rush in to bring 'freedoms' when required.- France always surrenders immediately, referencing to the defeat of France in 1940 at the hands of Nazi-Germany.- The Netherlands is almost always on drugs, loves his tulips and windmills, and loves to steal ''clay'' (land) from the sea.- The United Kingdom is an old gentlemen with a top hat on who often looks melancholic back to his glorious days as an empire that are now over.- Poland wants to go into space, but is unable to do so. Whilst we're pretty strict in prescribing the structure of comics on our subreddit, we don't tend to explicitly write into canon what a country's character ought to be. This claim is largely supported by the by the r/polandball moderators. Another moderator undergirds this claim by stating that comics containing ‘newsy’ commentary attracts visitors:Another moderator attests that event-related comics like ‘content satirizing Trump’s presidency’ are gateways that ‘bring in a lot of viewers’, while a different moderator states that these events do not even have to be major international topics:While a third moderator is more restrained in stating that ‘the real-life drama has to be pretty severe to cause mad wild spikes in traffic’, he does agree that political events like Trump’s presidency have provided incentives for an increase in traffic (i.e. As Polandball explores I have only explored the countryball content and culture on r/polandball, which in terms of platform mechanisms as well as content significantly differ from e.g. Our posters actually draw original artwork that makes a joke.

In her 2013 book As such, digital media have – perhaps rather obviously – generated new entry points for political participation.
Another moderator describes that because ‘the comics have always had a political bent’, innocent jokes and actual politicking are sometimes hard to separate:In this way, it is implied that the comics may carry political messages, as long as there is something to laugh about. On Reddit is a "subreddit" named eponymously after Polandball.

Especially the political usage of countryball comics becomes more likely since there are no gatekeepers to restrict the partisan appropriation of the images, and as such, the question of the tools an internet platform offers becomes a highly political matter. It's not what Polandball stands for anyway.Many, many commenters do take the comics too seriously, and they oftentimes flame each other and start political arguments in the comment sections. Usually, how abrasively offensive a joke in Polandball is related to how influential the actual country is.

It's not what Polandball stands for anyway.Many, many commenters do take the comics too seriously, and they oftentimes flame each other and start political arguments in the comment sections. On June 23rd 2016, a majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom shocked the global political stage by voting to leave the European Union. Read the Official Polandball Tutorial. In her 2013 book As such, digital media have – perhaps rather obviously – generated new entry points for political participation. It's clearly distinguished from rage comics and memes. If they are funny and carry a political message then so be it. Know Your Meme is an advertising supported site and we noticed that you're using an ad-blocking solution. those on Facebook. submissions, visitors and comments), becoming so severe that the team ‘had to “raise the bar” on low-effort Trump comics’, mainly because ‘many of them blew up across Reddit and were a nightmare to comment moderate’. Media theorist Limor Shifman argues that creating, consuming or rating visual internet artefacts, such as memes, videos or gifs, are modern-day forms of political participation. 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).