Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Funny post #4: Canada

In a weird corner of the memeworld of the internet, there's a whole storyline making fun of Canada for being ... a great country. You rarely see memes attacking a country or poking fun at a country for any reason (although occasionally Americans do come under fire, and Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are both popular targets), so it's weird that the most common country meme is about how good a country is. Take a look at some of these.
This one mentions how Canada reveres scientists:
One of the recurring themes is about how great Canada's free health care and other social services are:
And this one introduces us to a theme we'll examine next time:
What's ironic is that these "nice" qualities are not rare in developed countries. Universal health care, for example, is found in about 60 countries. But like many self-reinforcing stereotypes, people remember the hits and ignore whatever doesn't fit the pattern. It's just a nice change of pace that in this case the stereotype is a positive one.