Jacoub And Signing Polandball Comics

A few disclaimers before we start: If you don't know about Polandball, then look it up yourself because I don't feel like explaining it for the thousandth time. Also keep in mind that I'm an approved submitter, so I'm not just some random kid wining about "le fascist mods." For this post, I'm going to use "signature" and "watermark" interchangeably. Got all that? Good. Let's move on.

The Polandball subreddit is infamous on Reddit for having mods that strictly enforce the rules. Whether those rules be something as big as how you make the circles or as tiny as the colors of the flags, if you break them, you go back to the drawing board and fix whatever you did wrong. Now, this doesn't happen often, as the approved submitters know all the rules by heart. However, there's one rule that's really starting to rustle my jimmies: the no signature rule.

An example of a Polandball rule talking about how to draw a circle.

The no signature rule is, well, just that. You can't put anything on your comic about how you made it yourself. Now, at first, this made sense. Polandball comics used to be small, quick gags about countries that were poorly drawn in Paint. Signing those would be like signing something posted in Coaxed Into A Snafu. However, it's been six years. Like all forms of art, Polandball has evolved into something greater than that. Nowadays, the expectations of what a comic should look like have risen from wiggly lines to at least somewhat smooth lines, from a plain white background to more detailed ones. Yes, some artists still post comics that look like this, but the only one you see ever getting any sort of attention from it is Ludie Eggman. Polandball has evolved into having signable art, but that's only part of the reason why I want submitters to be able to sign their comics.

Instagram. And also iFunny, 9Gag, Polandball.cc, YouTube, but mainly Instagram. The worst offender of stealing Polandball comics. These "ball" accounts steal comics from the subreddit that people actually put effort in and post them on their accounts without giving any sort of credit to the original artist or even the sub they got it from. The worst part is that when they steal a comic that didn't get noticed much on Reddit, it usually gets much more attention when stolen and posted on Instagram, meaning the comic stealers grow while the original poster remains unnoticed. Oh yeah, there's also this "official" Polandball Facebook page that does the same thing and has more likes than the subreddit does if subscriptions = likes.

Oh, and they still think Dolan memes are funny for some reason.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of people getting their grubby hands on my and other people's arts just to be put through 10 layers of compression on Instagram and then somehow get that onto 9Gag or iFunny. But you know what's worse? The mods acting like there's nothing we can do about it, since they apparently don't want to be involved with these sorts of pages. Well there is a way we can do something without getting involved: letting us sign our comics.

To this day, I don't understand why the mods are opposed to signing comics. Signatures help gain more exposure to these small artists, making stealing more like sharing. Artists don't have to worry about their art not being properly credited or credited in the wrong way. And, when artists include "/r/polandball" in their signature, This can also be a big help for spreading the Polandball rules, something Instagrammers usually break when they make their own original comics. This, in turn, extends the life of Polandball even more, because after all, even with how much it has evolved, it's still an internet meme at heart. And hey, if you think people are misusing this new privilege, you can always make a tutorial on how to use signatures properly.