Who Memorizes the World Map?

The popular stereotype of America’s lack of education has struck yet again, this time with geography. Many cartographers, or people who create maps, around the country have banded together to discuss ways on how to create maps more efficiently. Manipulating the sheer ignorance of Americans, they considered one promising proposal during the annual conference of the International Cartographers Union: completely removing parts of the world map that Americans would otherwise not notice had gone missing. 

The original motivation for this idea was to save money on cartography materials due to inflation. Cartographers first removed New Zealand, which is supposed to be located to the east of Southern Australia. As expected, this went unnoticed by Americans. When interviewing people from across the country, nearly zero percent of interviewees had “ever heard of New Zealand in their lives.” 

However, cartographers knew that they would get away with much more, leading them to test the limits of American ignorance. Many had discussed with one another, whether online or in meetings, deciding that the next part of the world map gone would be islands in the Indian Ocean. This meant that one of the world’s largest islands, Madagascar, would also be removed. “Madagascar? Isn’t that a movie?” one interviewee questioned. 

Yet, not content with this continued bastardization of the map, these cartographers have given up making accurate maps entirely and have just turned the entire landscape of the world into guesswork. Maps include distorted land masses with political borders being non-existent and mountain ranges disregarded. 

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about directional changes,” one American mused as he showed his most recent map that placed South Korea in the north. Many countries with cardinal directions, even American states, had now switched places with one another. Now, legally binding documents and international agreements have been placed into jeopardy. 

“Why does that just say ‘vampires’?” mused another person looking at what once was Romania. Cartographers appear to be changing country names to various myths, with the only comment given being, “it’s fun.” 

As of this publication, China is a circle located in Central Siberia, the Balkans are blank with the words “fill it out yourself,” and Chile owns the coastline up to California. People from all around the world have attempted to adjust to these maps, but were shocked to realize that Mexico is not the home of the Brazilian parliament. 

Countries, angry about territorial shifts and confusion, have threatened to take action for “misrepresenting our countries” against the International Cartographers Union. In a recent press release, the president of the union stated, “How are they going to prove that we’re wrong? With our maps?” 

While it seems that maps will not be improving in the foreseeable future, questions still remain on how the average citizen is meant to get from place to place. However, with official guidelines advising to “wing it,” even the federal government seems to be deadlocked by this crisis. This has been your weekly report, live from what our map appears to say is Sudan.