Polandball

"In recent years, a little ill-drawn circle called Polandball has gained world fame quasi-instantaneously."

"Polandball has its own brand of lolspeak, and only Anglophone countries speak with good English. Other countryballs speak a farcical rendition of their own language into English."

"Polandball speaks in an English that mimics Slavic grammar, and confuses the finer points of English usage."

"Polandball was born out of a strange cyber war that took place in August 2009. On Drawball.com, a website which allows users to draw on a huge circular canvas, a group of Polish Internet users somehow coordinated their efforts to take over the ball."

"The idea of ridiculing international stereotypes turned out to be so catchy that it soon resulted in the creation of hundreds of Polandball stories."

"Polandball is the story of one guy creating a worldwide phenomenon by making fun of another guy, creating a new format of expressing one’s views on nationality, race, language and recent history along the way."

"Why did it become so successful? Maybe because the basic rules that apply to Polandball offer every creator a good basis for developing a funny story, yet offering very few restrictions."

"Polandball memes function almost like some sort of cultural genes – they self-replicate, freely mutate, and respond to selective pressures."

"Is there anything Poland itself can learn from Polandball? Perhaps a lesson in having a sense of humour about our long-time grudges, if nothing else."

"Polandball, based on a ball in the colours of the Polish flag, has become a gathering point online for protesters against Russia's actions in Ukraine."

"Polandball is being portrayed as a hero in comics that exaggerate the nation's response to the crisis."

"One comic, in which Poland flies into space and stops Russia using Crimea as a means of ramming the United States, has shot to the top of the charts in the Polandball sub-forum on Reddit."

"In August 2009, Polandball artists took over the popular Drawball site, making its logo look like Polandball."

"There are clear rules defined by the community stating that country balls can not have limbs nor can they speak proper English, keeping in line with the original Polandball style."

"What is Polandball, exactly? No, it's not a Calvinball variant — it's a type of webcomic that has been steadily gaining attention on Reddit."

"Polandballs also generally speak mangled English ('Engrish') of a type supposedly common in whatever countries are being portrayed."

"Polandball presents a nice medium ground between single-panel political cartoons and longer-form political satire."

"What keeps the quality of these comics so high? Each and every submission to the Polandball subreddit is reviewed by a very diligent team of moderators who demand only the highest quality."

"They have even implemented a mechanism to keep jokes from getting overdone and ruined, the Joke Life Preserve, which limits the ability of submitters to use certain jokes that have become annoying memes. This is part of the genius of the success of Polandball."

"...these comics don't have a specific author. They're treated as public property. Anyone can make their own "Polandball" using the following recipe: you have to have something to say about history or international politics and translate it into a simple comic, in which balls symbolizing different countries (which is manifested by painting them in the colors of the national flag) talk to each other using internet slang."

"Polandball's jokey simplicity, its nerdy love of history, and its focus on current affairs have made the form well suited for the Ukraine crisis."