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Josh Withey
Sep 26, 2017
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Vexillology is the study of the history and symbolism of flags, or just an interest in flags in general - so, if you're a Vexillologist I recommend you look away now.
Award winning comedian Ken Cheng has recently taken on the rather mammoth task of disrespecting every flag, from every country, one by one.
He's doing it on Twitter and it's going down very well indeed.
Speaking to indy100, Ken explained that he began lightly roasting the world's flags following the controversy surrounding NFL players taking a knee during the American national anthem, as a sign of peaceful protest against police brutality.
People are getting worked up at the idea of disrespecting a flag but I thought it would be fun to do all of them, in the true spirit of equality. I don’t actually hate them, in fact not caring about them either way is why I’m happy to disrespect them
People's responses to the thread have been amusing, but Ken thinks he has "accidentally tapped into some inherent interest in flags". "Some people are finding it educational. Some people are enjoying the nature of indiscriminate disrespect," he explained.
The entire process is pretty ad hoc, and Ken is of course dishing out praise where praise is due:
I’m doing them on the fly. I started without knowing how ambitious this task would actually be. I got 15 in and I actually realised I needed more to sustain it, which is why I started complimenting a few to mix it up, why I talked about the audition I was going to sack off to complete it, and why I ended up hiring conspiracy theorist Humbert Wendell to run the account.
The thread has been retweeted over seven thousand times, at time of writing, and the individual flags themselves are getting plenty of shares from people who concur with Ken's observations.
I think what people like about this thread is it was totally unexpected but also makes a lot of sense given the news recently. I hope my next thing won’t be trying to capitalise on this idea as that’s what people expect. My dream to once again have that surprise factor.
Of course I asked Ken to design his own flag after his extensive research - he replied:
It's easier to criticise than to create.
Naturally, we're listing every single flag here for you - we've had 69 out of 195 so far - and we kick off with the good ole US of A,
Then the United Kingdom, you'll never be able to unsee the diagonal lines.
Make sure you return for the remaining the remaining 126 flag based observations.
More: Ten hidden meanings in world flags
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