Normally, I would agree with you. But, I would like to offer a different point of view simply because this is a platform on the internet where the vast majority of the users seem to be from the US.

On a project like r/place, I kind of see that as a showing of people saying hey, we use this site, we are here everyday, there's lots of us, and we're from this country!

[–] jdeath@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

um, excuse me sweaty, but imaginary lines on the earth are the most important thing imaginable and we must worship them!

also: /s because i am not being serious

[–] crossal@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people are proud, or want to show representation

[–] TimeNaan@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

And as a citizen of one of these countries I say that's fucking dumb.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I find it frightening. It indicates a lot of blind nationalism on a fairly passionate level. Nothing good comes from that.

[–] Uno@monyet.cc 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Blind nationalism is certainly bad, but I don't really think that's the reason all the flags are so numerous and big:

Your average redditor is on r/place and wants to place a dot on something. However, you can imagine they participate casually and aren't joining any of the designated subreddits or whatever to coordinate their effort. So what is the lowest hanging fruit they can do to place a dot?
They can fix or contribute to an already existing artwork. However, to do that they already need to know what the artwork is supposed to look like. Well, flags are well known and generally easy to reproduce
In fact, some flags, such as Germany or France, are endlessly reproducable, and you can just keep infinitely expanding horizontally or vertically, contributing to the size of these monstrosities
But maybe you still want to contribute to something that resonates with you, instead of just a blue corner or a black void. Maybe lots of communities want to put artwork on place, but your average user will still probably resonate more with their identity as a German or American more than their identity as a subscriber of r/aww
Finally, all of these factors spiral. Maybe a reddit user is a fan of r/HydroHomies, and it just so happens they're making an icon. But the user doesn't know about this because it's too small to pick out, and if they did they're afraid they'd just mess up the design, but the flag of Germany is right there, so might as fill in the bits on the end of the rectangle that aren't straight yet.

TL;DR: r/place is just conducive to flags. also i had 10 mins to burn so i wrote all this for some reason idk