4chan Flag Bearers

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Part of a series on 4chan. [View Related Entries]

About

4chan Flagbearers is the name given to a series of exploitable drawings featuring several standard-bearers. The images are often used to make humorous listings and rankings on countries, ethnicities and other groups.

Origin

It's believed that the first image was posted in Krautchan's international board in late 2010, comparing Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (shown below).

However, the earliest known use of a flag bearer image online comes from the Warosu traditional games board, or /tg/, on September 25th, 2013. The image had a lineup of 10 flag bearers, all referencing characters from The Elder Scrolls game universe. The image was then subsequently posted seven more times within Warosu.

Spread

The earliest appearance on 4chan belongs to a thread from the politically incorrect board, /pol/, submitted on July 19th, 2014.^[1] In the thread, the submitter posted a template for several standard-bearers, inspiring other users to make their own versions; the thread eventually acquired over 200 comments.

A template was posted on iFunny in Fall 2015, where there are 34 different examples of the meme.^[6] A search of "flag bearer on 4plebs pulls in 420 results.^[3]