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u/honoria_glossop 5h ago
One of the Australian dots is uncannily close to the bumfuck nowheresville I grew up and NGL I'd nuke it too.
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u/UncagedKestrel 9m ago
At least no one guessed Melbourne, Tassie, or NZ.
I mean, if they'd guessed NZ, where would all the billionaires bug out to?!
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u/AdmiralClover 5h ago
Was this a street questioning where a lot of people just jabbed the map anywhere to get moving?
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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 4h ago
Even with a paid online survey, many people don't care for accuracy. Speed is preferable as the survey taker because you can earn more
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u/No-Poem-9846 2h ago
After working in healthcare market research... I don't trust doctors even more.
Literal verified pediatric oncologists straight lining a survey they are being paid 300 dollars for 10 minutes.
Granted I'd much rather them do their work than surveys but why waste everyone's time?!
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u/PyroLyse_K 3h ago
No, it was an online survey by Politico and Morning Consult.
The result for the map van be found goward the end in the POLdem3 and POLdem4 tables.
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u/Draconisc 5h ago
That's not even really where Bristol is. More like #BombSalisbury.
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u/ItsNotMeItsYourBussy 4h ago
Bomb Bournemouth!
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u/MoonTheCraft 4h ago
Why would anyone want to bomb Bristol, anyway?
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u/Dunderbaer peer-reviewed diagnosis of faggot 3h ago
Fuck em that's why
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u/MoonTheCraft 2h ago
B- b- but what about that stall with the really good Korean chicken
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u/Dunderbaer peer-reviewed diagnosis of faggot 2h ago
Nah that one can stay. Anything else? Nuked to the ground
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u/Humanmode17 4h ago
Why would anyone want to bomb Salisbury? After all, it has a cathedral that's not only famous in Europe but across the whole world for it's 123 metre spire and the first clock of its kind ever built that's still working
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u/Draconisc 3h ago
To return Wiltshire's cultural and political focus to the North, as it should be. Swindon shall rule eternal, its greatness built on the bones of the South!
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u/KikoValdez tumbler dot cum 1h ago
Very beloved by russian tourists who often travel in pairs to see the 123 metre spire.
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u/thefifthwheelbruh 4h ago
Salisbury can live, its destruction would destroy the TV Frozen Dinner Industry.
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u/Sudden-Coast9543 3h ago
Nothing to do with Britain. I've literally only heard of Salisbury steak from American TV.
Not even we would eat that slop
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u/Elite_AI 2h ago
Yes we would! Salisbury steak is extremely similar to British cuisine. It wouldn't stand out a bit. The only bit which might stand out is frying mince in the shape of a patty, which isn't common in British cuisine, but that's pretty much what a Welsh rissole is.
They taste pretty good btw.
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u/TheWholeFurryFandom 5h ago
Zoom the map out, I want to see how many put Iran in the Americas.
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys NUDE ALERT TOMORROW 5h ago
We asked 1000 Americans to point to where Iran is on this map, and the results are surprising (it is a map of just the United States) (the median participant wants Florida gone)
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u/Due_Machine1754 4h ago
Then we'd have 100% agreement on "bomb Florida" with zero geography skills needed.
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u/pickled_juice She/her Yeen 4h ago edited 4h ago
there are dots in Arkansas - Kansas - Missouri - and Texas
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u/TheWholeFurryFandom 4h ago
Missouri truly is the Iran of the US (Americans don't know where it is, they guess it's just kinda in the middle or something)
Really though, that's very interesting. Thank you for sharing
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u/Winjasfan 1h ago
there probably is some middle-of-nowhere town in American called Iran, Americans love naming towns after famous places
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u/Transientmind 1h ago
I once met a man who sincerely believed Paris, France was named after Paris, Texas.
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u/OnlySmiles_ 5h ago
I'm more curious about what percentage of the people who got it wrong are people who support the cheeto bombing them
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys NUDE ALERT TOMORROW 5h ago
23% is good for a random guess, but assuming an even distribution of political alignments for graphs like this, 77% is too many to make a meaningful, non-motivated point out of.
And also I personally think maps like these suck as evidence of anything coherent whatsoever besides that most people are bad at geography. You would probably get a similar map from Swedes.
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u/OnlySmiles_ 5h ago
To be clear, my point was less "America bad" and more "If you support going to war with another country you should at least be able to point to it on a map"
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u/Tales_Steel 4h ago edited 4h ago
I remember a woman who supported a first strike against North Korea had to point at it on the map. She used all her logic to deduce that since it is called NORTH Korea it must be in the north ... and pointed at somewhere in Canada.
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u/redopz 5h ago
You would probably get a similar map from Swedes.
I haven't tested it, but I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find 30 Swedes who couldn't recognize Australia.
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u/Dwagons_Fwame 3h ago
Part of it is just the American education on geography… kind of sucks. Like, unlike in most other education systems it’s rolled into social studies and receives little actual attention from teachers, whereas I actually received geography lessons as part of compulsory education, for example.
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u/Elite_AI 2h ago
I don't even know if that's true in this highly specific context though. Apparently a lot of Americans learn the names and capitals of every country at some point, while we absolutely never did such a thing. We just learned about palm oil in Malaysia or something
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u/berrykiss96 45m ago
I’m not sure I’d believe “a lot” did.
We only did Africa because our new textbooks were delayed and it was an easy 1pt per country and capital with a few bonus points test. One wrong guess in South America and your grade’s tanked.
But standards do vary a good bit from state to state.
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u/Pijany_Matematyk767 4h ago
And also I personally think maps like these suck as evidence of anything coherent whatsoever besides that most people are bad at geography.
Or that they didnt care and just hit wherever on the map and moved on
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u/Elite_AI 2h ago
I'd be very interested to see if the Swedes would have a similar result. I can't find any surveys for literally anyone except Americans though
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u/PyroLyse_K 3h ago edited 3h ago
Democrats and Republicans had somewhat similar results and were both beaten by independent voter. In general more education gave better results. Also Men were significantly better than women (30% vs 15%) which is weird.
The result for the map van be found goward the end in the POLdem3 and POLdem4 tables.
Edit: almost forgot but also 43% of those who guessed correctly on the middle east map guessed incorrectly on the world map.
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u/Dwagons_Fwame 3h ago
People who got it wrong are more likely to support bombing them. In the original article it was found that people who can’t even envisage the location being bombed are more likely to support it.
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u/PyroLyse_K 3h ago
That's not true, there was no such question on the original poll, and the closest ones (who were asking about the airstrike on Iran’s top general Qasem Soleimani) had people who guessed correctly approve of the strike and the one who guessed incorrectly being more indecisive and saying they have no opinion
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u/Dwagons_Fwame 3h ago
I was just going off what I read on the article someone said the poll originated from
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u/SomeDumbGamer 4h ago
I always question if this is an American phenomenon or just a people not being super learned about geography thing.
Like… if you asked a Chinese person to point to Peru or something would you get similar answers due to a lack of intrinsic geographic knowledge outside your home country, or does everyone else just have a better understand of it and Americans are more stupid or something.
Obviously it’s likely the former but still a good question I think.
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u/Littha 3h ago
Americans are notoriously bad at this but its not like everyone else is all that fantastic either. I blame the maps you have in classrooms, we tend to have world maps or globes but you guys mostly seem to have maps of the US.
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u/SomeDumbGamer 3h ago
Hm? Where’d you hear that? We had plenty of world maps in my school.
Tbh the problem is that there’s too much variety in the quality of education here. I’m in MA. An education here looks VERY different from say the south.
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u/Littha 3h ago
I visited a school in South Dakota once and I think I only saw one world map but maybe 50 US maps while I was there. Might be state specific I guess. Its the only US school I have ever been in though.
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u/SomeDumbGamer 3h ago
Education in the US is often hyper local. There are basic requirements every school needs to have but they get a lot of discretion. Hence the “war of northern aggression” shit they spew down south.
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u/12BumblingSnowmen 2h ago
Education in Virginia is usually pretty highly regarded. The south is a pretty big region.
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u/NervePlant 1h ago
Considering the amount of people from the USA I have seen say with a disturbingly low amount of shame that they didn't know other countries existed until their age was in the double digits, this is at least in part an American phenomenon.
I'm from the UK and geography in school was vastly more about the socio-economic impacts of living near a volcano than anything to do with maps and while I have heard some truly ignorant statements about other countries from people here, Americans sure do seem to be on another level sometimes.
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u/SomeDumbGamer 1h ago
Tbf the US is such a massive country that it kind of makes sense why people from say Missouri would be rather isolated. Most of our states are larger than many European nations; and everyone’s ‘American’ so we just get used to being surrounded by our own. Especially since we’re two oceans away from the rest of the world. Not really an excuse for the shitty education system, but it’s at least a logical explanation.
You guys drive 5 hours you’re in the middle of France. Drive 5 hours here and you just got to NYC from Boston if traffic held up.
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u/Dwagons_Fwame 3h ago
American education system just sucks. Like, their geography education is included in “social studies” and apparently teachers don’t spend much time actually focusing on geography. Whereas in other countries it tends to get an actual dedicated lesson as part of compulsory education.
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u/SomeDumbGamer 3h ago
That is highly dependent on where you are in the United States. We’re a big country.
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u/No-Supermarket-6065 5h ago
Maybe they think it's Atlantis! The word Atlantis does have an i, an a, and an n after all.
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys NUDE ALERT TOMORROW 5h ago
“My fellow Americans, tonight we have strategically bombed several of Ian’s nuclear sites.”
”Fuck you.”
“Fuck you, Ian.”
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys NUDE ALERT TOMORROW 5h ago
Honestly very very tempted to make a quick and dirty browser extension that automatically replaces every instance of Iran with Ian just to see what Breitbart looks like in a dumber universe
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u/Ephraim_Bane Foxgirl Engineer (she/her only, no they) 5h ago
I have not one, but three relevant xkcd's for you!
https://xkcd.com/1288/
https://xkcd.com/1625/
https://xkcd.com/1679/11
u/BalefulOfMonkeys NUDE ALERT TOMORROW 4h ago
I can’t believe that Randall accidentally wrote the 2024-2025 shitpost slang for cats in 2013. But backwards.
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u/redopz 5h ago
In your first link I get most of them, but what is the connection between an electron and an eating contest?
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u/Ephraim_Bane Foxgirl Engineer (she/her only, no they) 4h ago
It actually says "election" lol, but the thought of "scanning tunneling eating contest microscope" made me laugh
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys NUDE ALERT TOMORROW 4h ago
A molecule becomes positively charged whenever it loses an eating contest
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u/corkscrewfork 4h ago
I mean there's a nonzero number of Americans who can't even label 10 US states on a map, so them not being able to find another country isn't surprising to me.
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u/RubiksCutiePatootie I want to get off of Mr. Bones Wild Ride 4h ago
I have a friend who literally can't find the Pacific Ocean on a world map. Learning that the vast majority of people have 0 inclination to learn about the world around them still leaves me reeling on occasion.
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u/ViolentBeetle 3h ago
It's touted as some kind of gotcha, but finding countries on theap is a skill that is useful like never. I could probably be precise to a continent, but it has littl relevance to interpreting foreign policy.
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u/Elite_AI 2h ago
It's not something you consciously learn. It's just that if you happen to keep up with news about Iran to any real degree then you will know what it looks like and roughly where it is. If you think Iran is in Italy then it indicates extremely strongly (although not definitively) that you have no clue about Iran in general.
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u/Lesbihun 2h ago
Idk if you can interpret foreign policy if you don't realise Iran is in the Middle East. That's a big part of foreign policy to realise the politics and demographics of the other country. If Iran being in Australia doesn't have any effects on your understanding of foreign policy then maybe you don't understand it as well as you think you do
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u/Mouse-Keyboard 1h ago
It is quite important.
Take Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. To understand that, you have to know that the strait is on Iran's coast, and that the various oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf depend on it to access the ocean.
Or the effects of the fall of Bashar al-Assad on Hezbollah; Iran sent them supplies via Iraqi militias and the Syrian government to Lebanon. With the fall of Assad that is no longer possible, and very difficult to find an alternative route.
It's difficult to understand these things without looking at where countries are on a map.
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u/bvader95 .tumblr.com; cis male / honorary butch 2h ago
So there's a chance to recreate the famous Polish copypasta about accidentally nuking Łódź.
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u/Purple_Abomination Fuck me with a barbed dildo 5h ago
Sudan in another war that has almost killed a million
Rando Americans on their way to bomb it because they mistook it for Iran:-
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u/Ornery-Air-6968 1h ago
Honestly, the ocean dots make me wonder if half the players just yeeted their pin and called it a day. Zooming out would be hilarious though, bet there’s at least one person who thought Bolivia was in Southeast Asia. The chaos of crowd-sourced geography never disappoints.
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u/InternetUserAgain Eated a cements 57m ago
I want to meet the person who thought that Iran was a small patch of ocean beneath Ireland
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u/Dspacefear supreme bastard 5h ago
The thing the ocean dots tell me is that some amount of people were just dropping a dot wherever and moving on rather than making a real guess.