[0:06]Flags.
[0:14]I love flags. I love big flags, I love small flags, I love flags with little little guys on them. I love flags that are made of triangles, I love flags that are made of capes. I love flags that are made of snakes. And if there's one thing that I know about flags, it's that they are meaningless. They're entirely context driven. They only get meaning when someone can convince you that they mean something. Still though, I love them. Even without this prescribed meaning, they they they itch something in my brain, they get something in there. You know what I mean? I mean, I mean, look at this one. Finland. Just a blue X. It's just a blue X, but you know what, that shape, this little simple shape, appears again and again and again and again, and each time, it means something completely different to millions of people. Oh, that shit's fire. Let me paint the scene. When I was a little kid, I was drawing flags and inventing fictional kingdoms to go along with them, pretty much all day, every day.
[1:24]I made this one when I was 25 years old. I'd make nations in Sim City and then create flags to go along with them. I'd invent this like geopolitical turmoil with all my other cities I'd built, and then use the disaster tool to blow up portions of the map and pretend it was an attack from another city. And then I'd play around the crater, using it as part of the story and facing the challenges I'd set for myself. I would spend literally tens of minutes, building flag after flag after flag to use in my video game warfare. That wasn't until at least my my teacher made me stop. Which is which is quite unfair, considering he taught me what a flag was. Naturally, as I grew up, Karma dictated that I must create a flag that has some sort of meaning to someone, somewhere.
[2:18]This is the flag of L'Manberg.
[2:24]And some of you may already be aware of this flag, either by your own volition or through having it shoved down your throat in every available opportunity in the early 2020s. It became somewhat of a mini icon, some kind of vivacious vexillological virus that it started infecting even parts of internet culture it wasn't related to. It represents, and buckle in for this one, a Minecraft improvvisational geopolitical roleplay based on the Broadway musical Hamilton,
[3:05]called the Dream SMP. I think it's cool. I like how this weird microcosm of Minecraft fanatics has had a has had a flag to stand behind, no matter how foreign of a concept that might have been to me 10 years ago. But where are people getting these flags from? I mean, you've got stickers, phone cases, defibrillators, condoms. I mean, I've never specifically made any L'Manberg flag merch, aside from the pillow. Well, if you go on Amazon right now, you too can become the proud owner of a copy of this image I made on a pirated version of Photoshop all the way back at the start of Covid. Covid.
[3:55]How does something like that happen? Oh, god. Uh, I think some wires got crossed.
[4:07]You see, as far as I can remember, I never actually named the L'Manberg flag. Colloquially, it came to be known as the Freedom Flag, due to the fact it was used as a standard for fighting against tyranny. In the storyline of this Minecraft server. But you see, there are already a couple of freedom flags, most notably, the Four Freedom flags flown by the UN in the early 1940s. Fun fact, this almost became the official UN flag. Before they went and blew it. Pause for laughter. There's other flags that have been called the Freedom Flag too, you know, there's the French flag, there's the US flag sometimes, and of course, the flag of L'Manberg. I want you to picture this. You're a protester, perhaps an over-excited protester, who who doesn't have time to do the eight seconds of research it takes to look into the back story of a flag you're about to buy. All you know is, you want something that vaguely gestures towards the notion of freedom. So, of course, you Google the word Freedom Flag. You buy the first one you see and you say to yourself, that would look great next to my Maga Trump flag. And you completely ignore the true symbolism I baked into the simple design.
[5:27]The hoist side bars do not represent a skepticism for modern medicine. They represent L'Manberg's beautiful Minecraft walls. The bars, they represent our Minecraft war, our Minecraft peace, our Minecraft liberty. And the crosses, well, they're distinctly European, and they imitate one of my all-time favorite flags.
[6:07]The flag of Amsterdam. Which is hilarious. It is, but still though, what gives? I mean, I I didn't want my flag being used in an anti-vax movement. I didn't I didn't want it being flown next to right-wing populist flags. If you were in my position, what would you do? Would you hop on the mic and spit hot facts, telling people to not misinterpret your beloved flag? Maybe. Maybe. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that, but to what ends will you go until everyone capitulates to your specific definition of the flag? I suppose I'm just reveling in the absurdity of it all. I mean, it's a it's a Minecraft flag for Christ's sake. Like, like the fact that an anti-vaxxer would consider this to be a symbol of freedom is both a massive compliment and also the best piece of poetic irony I've ever been involved with. But still, that doesn't answer the question of why? I mean, surely someone would check before spending their hard-earned cash on something that supposedly has deep symbolic meaning to them. I mean, are they stupid? This hasn't happened before, right?
[7:22]Vatican City. The Vatican City is a European theocracy and the world's smallest country. In fact, it's so small, they tried to hide it, here, in Rome. But they didn't do a very good job, because I know it's there. And so do 1.4 billion Catholics, who really dig it, because it's where their dad lives, Pope Rob. But it didn't used to be small. In fact, it used to be about this big, and annoyingly for future Italy, it stretched right across the middle of their marvelous shoe.
[8:03]In the late 19th century, Italy decided it wanted to be one whole boot under one whole foot of a government. And so, in 1870, they invaded the Pope's land, kicked him out of politics, and they took it. Now, this made Mr. Religion furious. In fact, he was so pissed, he locked himself in his special Pope house and called himself a prisoner. He started sending loads and loads of angry letters, closed his eyes, covered his ears, and pretended Italy didn't exist. But it did exist. It was right over there. Now, this wouldn't really matter, but the problem was Italy had consumed so many communion wafers, they were so full of Catholicism that some concession had to be made to ensure Mr. Divine forwent his whines. So, what did the Pope want? All Mr. Religion wanted was to keep being king, keep being head of the Catholic Church alongside Invisible Jesus, and be given lots of Pope money as an apology. Italy said no. And then they ignored him back for half a century. They ignored him for so long, in fact, they turned fascist, and they decided a round man called Benito Mussolini should be in charge. Now, Mr. Mussolini was actually an atheist, but he saw how good the Pope could be for his image. So, after pretending to be a Catholic for a little bit, he gave the Pope everything he wanted on one condition. He stopped pretending Italy doesn't exist. This worked. The Vatican City was born, the Pope promised not to say anything mean about fascism, and they made a flag. This flag. It's pretty cool, huh? Wouldn't you say? It's got a it's got a hat or a tiara, if you will. Uh, and it's a square. That's good, it's one of the only flags that's a square. Along with Switzerland. Uh, it's got keys on it. That's pretty cool. The keys have meaning, too. This key is supposed to represent the Pope's ability to unlock the spiritual world. And this key is supposed to represent the Pope's ability to unlock five Clockhouse Lane in Romford. RM5 3PA. And a great place to see any flag you want is WikiCommons, which is the resource that's used to supply Wikipedia with its images. Look, I'll show you. You go on and you type in any flag you want, and you'll be met with hundreds of high definition, completely licensed.
[10:28]Communist.
[10:32]Now, in 2005, when Wikipedia was this outlandish, anarchistic force on the internet, a user by the name of Nightstallion, who I can only assume got his name because he is a gentle, God-fearing man, decided he was going to create the official WikiCommons image for the Vatican City Flag. He followed the guidelines down to a T. As told in the fundamental law of Vatican City, Article 20. The flag of Vatican City state is constituted by two fields divided vertically, a yellow one next to the staff and a white one, and bears in the latter the tiara with the keys. The tiara with the keys, being the Pope's coat of arms. Look, I saw one on the side of a church.
[11:25]And so, Nightstallion did this. He created the flag. And here it is. Ta-da!
[11:34]But hang on a second, it it it says here that in 2013, a a user called Fulvio314 edited the flag to bring it more in line with the official one. Okay, what's the difference? What's the difference? The hat. The hat hasn't got the the red bit under it anymore. Oh my gosh. So it turns out some depictions of the people coat of arms are supposed to have a red disk under the tiara. But annoyingly, some don't for some reason, and the flag is supposed to use the people coat of arms that doesn't have the red disk under it. Okay, well, I'm glad we avoided that faux pas. I guess we can all rest easy now knowing that is the final definitive Vatican City Flag.
[12:26]Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But it says here, it says here that a couple of years later, a user by the name of WikiDan61 edited the flag again to put the red disc back under it. And it didn't get changed again for many years. He wrote, color correction. All images of actual Vatican City flags show the gold in the keys and tiara rendered in the same hue as the gold yellow band of the flag, as well as a red opening at the bottom of the tiara. It's not supposed to have the red bit under it. It's not supposed to have the red bit under it at all. Oh, well, uh, no matter. I'm sure this won't have any long-term effects on the real world.
[13:24]Emojis. Even the emojis were wrong. If the emojis are wrong, how are we supposed to trust anything in this world? Yes, it's true. If you Google Vatican City Flag right now, chances are, you're going to be met with hundreds and hundreds of images of the wrong flag, some even being flown in Vatican City. And the worst part, this mistake was only noticed in 2023. That wasn't very long ago. Amazon. Amazon will even sell you the wrong Vatican City flag if for some reason you'd want that.
[14:09]I did.
[14:13]They were doing a two for one on Albania. I mean, even right now, Facebook and Twitter are using the wrong flag on their emoji stickers. God, this makes me so angry.
[14:27]I am fuming, mega, mega, fucking fuming. Someone's got to pay. Was it WikiDan's fault? Is he to blame for this mix-up? Should we hunt him down in the streets? Well, no. Whilst he did reinforce the initial mistake online, he was not the first person to make that mistake. I mean, hell, Neil Armstrong even flew the wrong flag all the way back in 1969. He took it to the mother cruding moon. What a bastard. Let's get Neil. We got to go after Neil Armstrong now, right? Not quite. Rules for flag design standards are mostly a modern invention. I mean, for centuries, people would just accurately as possible describe the flag, and then leave the rest up to artistic interpretation. There was often no rules about what shade of color to use, how big the symbols should be, sometimes even the length and the width of the flag itself. As far as I can tell, there was once a period of time when showing any one by two rectangle of any shade of green was technically the official flag of Libya. So that makes the red disk right? No. If I may speak for all of us, which I may, I would say we'd all agree that flags are no longer up to artistic interpretation, and that people expect flags to be a consistent design, no matter where you see them. Um, do do you think that that flags should be standardized or or they can be up to interpretation?
[16:04]I I got one more question. Hey, I'm busy. Look, I'm not saying anyone should be mocked for drawing, let's say, the Swiss flag with a slightly wrong shade of red or where the arms of the cross are not exactly 1/6th as long as they are wide. But you know who should be mocked? Corporations. Yes, this does matter to me. How are we letting Jeff Bezos get away with this? Millions of dollars worth of money are changing hands every day over flags, and no one, no one can be bothered to even check if we're using the correct ones. I mean, this is one of, if not the most important flags in the Catholic faith. And if you Google Catholic Flag, it shows the wrong bloody flag. Is anybody going to fix this? Is anybody going to fix this? No. And I'm sorry to tell you this if you're just finding this out now, but no one actually cares about any of this. Even oblique nerds like you and me are never going to do anything to fix it. Unless we spread more awareness, it's going to keep churning out. It's going to be absorbed by language models who spew it back at us, and eventually AI image generation will make it official, and we'll all die waving the wrong flag in the water wars of 2031. So, here we are. World is a fuck. Kill 'em all 1989. I am Flagman. Is anyone even out there? Can anyone hear this? Who am I? What is a flag? Why do anything ever if everything's wrong and no one cares?
[17:42]I went back and looked at my L'Manberg flag. The crosses are off center, they're slightly tilted, the the semi-circles completely misaligned. And I know, I know what you're going to say in the comments. You're going to say, heck it up, brother. Minecraft's over, you're in the past, give it a rest. I may not be able to control how people use my flag or what its meaning is to people. I can control how it's supposed to be displayed. In the description, I've gone and attached a PNG of a new and improved design of the flag, including color schemes, how to display it, ratios. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know how to do flag standardization, but I've given it a good shot. Unlike the Vatican City flag, this silly Minecraft flag has been a part of my life for way too long now, and I hope if you're a fan of it, these adjustments can mean something to you as the final, definitive version of it. I hope you see it as a love letter of sorts, you know, from from me to consistency, from me to flags, and from me to you. Now stop bringing it to my shows. Abandoning control of how others view your work is often referred to as death of the author, which is a tricky concept to grapple with, I think. I mean, I find it hard when someone misunderstands my order at a restaurant. And now I have to grapple with the idea of people misconstruing my flag. C'est la vie. If you start fighting to force your art to be perceived a certain way by people, it no longer exists in the eye of the observer. It becomes an ego-driven practice that's all about yourself. I mean, sure, you remove the ability for bad actors to misuse your work. But I don't think that's worth it at the cost of audience interpretation. Free what you make from your own life. Let it live through other people, and you'll find it'll become all the more richer for it.
