Countryballs

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. Please help improve it by replacing them with more appropriate citations to reliable, independent sources. (March 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Some of this article's listed sources may not be reliable. Please help improve this article by looking for better, more reliable sources. Unreliable citations may be challenged and removed. (March 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (September 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Russian article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Countryballs]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Countryballs}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Countryballs, also known as Polandball,^[a] is a geopolitical satirical art style, genre, and Internet meme, predominantly used in online comics strips in which countries or political entities are personified as anthropomorphic balls^[b] with eyes, decorated with their national flags. Comics feature the characters in various scenarios, mostly poking fun at national stereotypes, international relations, and historical events. Other common features in Countryball strips include non-English countries speaking in broken English — with vocabularies of their national languages included — political incorrectness, and black comedy. Strips are generally created using Microsoft Paint or more advanced graphic art software, often made to intentionally look crudely drawn.^[1]

Countryballs continue to be popular on the Internet, with the Facebook community reaching over 215,000 members by July 2015,^[2] and the subreddit r/Polandball reaching over 650,000 by 2024. Several other communities are active on VK, Telegram, YouTube, Twitter, and Bilibili. It has also been the subject of research by various institutions, as well as positive and negative commentary for both their simplistic and offensive nature, with some feeling they could allow readers to learn about unknown events. Various video games and alternate history works have been based on the meme. As of today there a total of 268 countryballs in the world.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).