Polandball, or Countryballs, is a crude art format which often appears in communities pertaining to history or politics. This format originated from Krautchan around September 2009, where it began as mostly non-political jabs at a certain tripcode user from Poland who posted with them.

During the late 2000s, there was a huge circular 'drawball.com' canvas, and users at the Polish sports forum 'kibice.net' got the idea to impose the flag of Poland over it on August 12, 2009¹⁾²⁾³⁾ which succeeded by August 15, 2009. Shortly after, 4chan attempted to impose a Nazi Swastika over it, but failed, so they resorted to DDoS attacks on Polish social media (e.g. Nasza Klasa, Wykop), but also failed.⁴⁾⁵⁾

On Krautchan's “International” (/int/) board, the Polish user “Wojak” from Eris-chan praised the event, though he didn't have a good grasp on English (e.g. 'cannot into space', 'that feel when'). He reportedly inspired the British user “Falco” to make crude Polandball comics as a way to poke fun at him, thus why Polandball has an upside-down flag,⁶⁾ poor English, and would cry as a punchline.

Eventually, the format has since deviated to poke fun at international relations and geopolitical conflicts, as it spread to 4chan by Novmeber 15, 2009. This allowed the format to spread, but simultaneously became its downfall because political tryhards and self-proclaimed history buffs would latch onto it, then there would be a massive surge in bodied Countryballs, dubbed 'Countryhumans', sometime around 2018.

The format has a low skill floor and tends to oversimplify complex topics, which has allowed it to become this subtle low-effort propaganda tool as there are people who unironically take the format at face value without doing any research or forming their own opinions, raising the post-literate society issue. This is especially at its worst on Reddit (e.g. Shenshen–/r/polandball case)⁷⁾ and YouTube.

• The ominous bird with red robes is called the 'Omsk bird' (Омская птица) or 'Winged Doom', which references a Russian copypasta from Sosach. Some boards use this as their 'Unknown' flag.

• Countryballs on Wikipedia [EN]
• Polandball on ChanWiki [PL]