this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
546 points (99.1% liked)
Mildly Interesting
27800 readers
1403 users here now
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Mercator projection was favoured because it was useful for navigation due to preserving rhumb lines, representing them as straight lines on the map, and has been around for like 400 years.
Given that barely anyone does navigation like this any more it's not that important to keep it as the default view for world maps that aren't used for navigation such as a simple wall map. Web maps and the use of pseudomercator have definitely kept it relevant in modern times and as the most recognizable projection.
There isn't much basis to say it's used to "make colonial countries look bigger and Africa look smaller" except for people virtue signaling in blog posts over the last decade. If anything then it's a psyop by Big Greenland.
As this post explains, you can just look at a globe if you want accurate size representation, because all map projections are distorted and there is always a tradeoff.
E: Oops I can see several people already explained this since refreshing the post.
I dont disagree, but I think if the case was opposite and a useful projection made the countries in power look smaller they wouldn't have picked it as their favourite projection. The distortion is in favour of the (small) powerful countries, which may not have been the main reason but you can't call it a happy coincidence either.
It is a coincidence though, in the sense that the Mercator projection by necessity inflates things near the poles relative to the equator.
The major powers at the time were countries like Britain, Spain, France, and Italy. Not Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Canada, which are inflated far more than the former.
This may or may not be true—in fact I'll just assume that it's true, fuck it—but I will say that it's kind of like being asked to have an opinion on whether this person or that gets top billing on the theater marquee: is it going to be Rose & Krants or Krants & Rose? Which do you think, morally, is the superior option? I really, really don't care.
And it bothers me a smidge that people do only because I feel like they're being distracted by jangling keys. But oh well, whatever. Not my business, I guess.
I, for one, thought Africa had a smaller footprint that it has because of the maps in school and it made me think that it was less signifiant than it is. It doesn't make sense, because a country could be very little but have billions of people in it for example. Nonetheless, I get the feeling. If I was from a country that suffered from colonialism and whatnot, I'd want a better projection of it on 2d maps. Simply because I know a chunk of people would better see my nation's place in the world.
A country's, or a continent's, signifigance has nothing to do with it's size, though.
I mean, if we wanted to make the nations of Africa or Greenland feel better, does it follow that we could make them appear bigger on the map than they actually are? Just move the mercator around such that Africa is along the top or bottom edge of the map where things are larger?
I am absolutely not saying that people having a better understanding of Africa is bad. I just don't think that this is really how that happens.
I remember thinking that Russia seemed pretty big on the map, and yet still, I've never had to take Russian culture as a class in high school.
[edit] I'll add one thing, though. This decision has clearly pissed the US government off, which is based and incredibly funny. I'll support it to that end.
Depends what type of significance. Of course it's more significant when it's larger in size if you value things like farmland, natural resources, fishing, transportation, infrastructure, timezones, language, etc.
If you think the US is similar in size to Africa, like I thought, and you compare the 51 states to the 54 countries, you might think each African country is similar in area to a state in the USA and extrapolate to other beliefs accordingly. Maybe you think there is a greater cultural cohesion in the entire continent because people are closer to each other and so on. Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa. That is way more than in the US, but the size is really skewed in the Mercator.
I don't understand your point about wanting to make Greenland feel better. The Equal Earth Projection is more accurate when looking at land area, so it's not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country, more of a question of not having the Mercator projection contributing to people thinking less of our country, amongst other things, like just being more factual.
And like the other commenter said, Russia doesn't really have this problem anyway, it's very large in all our popular projections.
But these are facts I can learn independently of its, you know, appearance on a map. And outside of this being a notable news story, I don't really see it prompting any such questions.
It is, though. That's actually the only purpose this serves.
I think you might read that as dismissive, but I see some value in making people feel better. Certainly in making the US feel worse.
I don't, however, think that this will meaningfully improve anything.
It's area should still be incorrect, though, yes? Which would mean we have incorrect ideas about its natural resources, its farmland, its cultural cohesion?