37,500 border drawings: a map of the world as people remember it
An interactive visualization aggregates over 37,000 user-submitted border and coastline drawings to reveal how the public collectively remembers world geography.
summary is enough The interactive project is fun to play with briefly, but the concept and findings are fully explained in the summary.
summary
A developer compiled over 37,000 user-submitted border and coastline drawings from an online game into an aggregate map. This visualization maps collective geographical memory, showing where public perception aligns with reality and where it blurs. Despite individual memory errors, the stacked lines paradoxically converge on a roughly correct global outline. Commenters enthusiastically discuss the data, suggest demographic clustering features, and debate map projection biases.
key points
- An online game called Borderline collected over 37,000 player sketches of world borders and coastlines.
- Stacking these user drawings visualizes the hive mind of global geographic literacy and common memory gaps.
- In response to community feedback, the creator added optional demographic prompts to analyze drawing accuracy by country.
who should read it
Web developers, geography enthusiasts, and data visualization hobbyists.
discussion warm
consensus
Commenters are broadly enthusiastic about the project, praising the interactive concept and discussing how collective errors map out human geographic memory.
pushback
A few users point out minor bugs like coastline helpers on mobile and debate the inherent bias of 2D map projections.
I think the question comes from (or is at least related to) the recent UN vote on moving from Mercator to Equal Earth projection.
What people are drawing isn't the "truth" on average. First, nobody has seen the world from actual far away (space) and is just using what they remember from school or other media. And second, there is no "truth" because we are fundamentally dealing with a 2d projection of the 3d surface of a sphere and there are many different projections, all with advantages and disadvantages, neither being more correct than any other.
It expands the discussion by noting that because all 2D maps are projections, there is no single objective geographic truth being drawn.
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