Jamaica won the World Cup Of Flags
If you are not a denizen of the Twitter streets then this is most likely the first time you are hearing about the World Cup Of Flags.
What is the World Cup Of Flags?
The World Cup of Flags was a Twitter based tournament where flag enthusiasts could vote on the flags they liked from Twitter polls run by the account @WorldCupOfFlags created by @ElectionMapsUK
192 flags 32 groups 38 days from the 3rd of April to 17th of May
*Fun fact there’s 195 countries in the world
The software that was used to generate the match fixtures could only allow groups of six so instead of eliminating some countries from participating and possibly starting a world war the following countries ran on joint ticket:
- Monaco + Indonesia
- Chad + Romania
- Netherlands + Luxembourg
Why a World Cup Of Flags?
It was a labour of love, supposed to be a fun way to spend time and also learn the flags of countries and appreciate the aesthetics and designs of flags.
The good, the bad and the ugly
The matches fixtures were computer generated and the voting begun, its hard to imagine the amount of work that went into this especially if you factor in that one cannot schedule twitter polls, so the fixtures had to manually posted.
The initial polls had low vote counts compared to the later ones but the World Cup gained momentum especially when influential twelebs (that’s the twitter lingo for twitter celebs with huge followings) joined in rallying for people to vote for particular flags, and which would usually be their home flags.
The spirit of the World Cup Of Flags was rooted in appreciating and voting on the aesthetics of flags but the rise in participants saw an unanticipated shift when more tweeps (twitter lingo for people on twitter) joined the tournament, voting on polls with their country’s flag and would invariably not only vote for their flag simply because it was their flag but recruit others to vote too…
One can see how those who had been invested the tournament from the start would feel like it had been hijacked into more of a World Cup Of Who Can Get The Most Votes For Their Country’s Flag On A Poll.
Initially there were no rules or at least none that had been publicly stated on how participants on the poll should vote or not vote…
A new rule was added which would disqualify a winning flag if the match got more than 50% more total votes than another match of the same day.
Zimbabwe had qualified to the quarter finals and a highly contested match between Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe may have started a twar (Twitter war) I am sure it was one of the most spotlighted fixtures with even The Prime Minister Of Trinidad and Tobago and a leader of the opposition party rallying their citizens to vote, equally twimbos (Zimbabweans on Twitter) were tagging each other to vote en masse and the poll ended with a close win for Zimbabwe.
In the next fixture with the Zimbabwean flag against the Namibian flag, Zimbabwe won and got disqualified from the tournament.
On the surface, it does look like supporters of the Zimbabwean flag broke the participation rule by only voting in their poll and not in the other poll of the day which was Barbados VS Antigua& Barbuda
But the participation rule has a loop hole: tweeps can simply pool votes on one particular flag and have it disqualified.
After Zimbabwe was disqualified there were matches between the countries knocked out by Zimbabwe to see who should qualify to the semi-finals and Jamaica proceeded and eventually won the tournament.
You can find the rest of the world cup of flags standings by clicking on the button below
I only became aware of this tournament after I saw the poll on my timeline and naturally I voted for my flag Zimbabwe…. Frankly though I think our flag is little busy and after the dust settles, we really should streamline it into something minimalist while preserving what it stands for…
vegetation and agriculture of our land
mineral wealth symbolised by gold
Blood shed in the liberation struggle
Heritage and ethnicity of the black majority
And the Red star for our aspirations
Zimbabwe bird national emblem
set in a white triangle symbolising peace
Its probably not the most beautiful flag, but its ours and on it rests a lot of our identity, the story of Zimbabwe, the colonisation, the land our chaotic revolution, the minerals and their exploitation, majority rule and our expectations.
Once upon our history a #ThisFlag movement almost started a revolution.
The World Cup Of Flags may not have been a World Cup Of Countries but for some of us it felt like we were standing up for our flag, our hopes and dreams, so of course you can imagine the disappointment when we got disqualified, for supporting our flag too much. If the twitter gods listened to tweep’s prayers, the account running the flag tournament would have been suspended from twitter but still it stands… yeah that’s not our finest hour…
This is twitter! *In King Leonidas of 300 voice.
Well, perhaps, we deserved being disqualified for not being in it for the spirit of the competition, but hey on twitter things have a way of spiralling virally out of control. One cant just go and start getting people to vote on people’s flags and not expert feelings to not be caught. To a casual observer of the World Cup of Flags it may have seemed like Zimbabweans are a boisterous, vindictive lot but really you just caught at us a bad time and twitter has a way of bringing out the toxic in people.
When the outside is allowed and travel is allowed again do visit our country and experience the hospitality of this teapot shaped country.
Credit goes out to those behind the tournament and the amount of work they put into it to try and create something to fill up the lockdown days, some fun was had…
Maybe in the future protocol and rules should be laid out to maintain objectivity.
~B
PS… Aston Villa knows how we roll !!!!! ^_^
Becoming The Muse 
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