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Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

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Re: Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

#11

Post by gus_massa »

fryktelig wrote: post #10
NelsonMinar wrote: post #9

I had a map go viral in 2013, a map of US rivers. Here's the Daily Mail article about it, the apotheosis of virulence. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342083/The-veins-n... Two things made it go viral. 1. Jason Kottke posted it to his weblog. Either you know about Kottke or you don't. Many journalists do. He's an authentic low-key tastemaker. 2. I shared the map on Flickr with a CC by-SA license. Which mean…

Great post! Is the GitHub project also still available?

I agree.

@GP: It's never too late to post old stuff in HN if it's interesting. Just add (2013) to the title here. It can also be a post mortem, with the extendd story in your comment, a few maps and the explanations of the main suggested improvements.

Re: Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

#12

Post by mci »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #9

I had a map go viral in 2013, a map of US rivers. Here's the Daily Mail article about it, the apotheosis of virulence. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342083/The-veins-n... Two things made it go viral. 1. Jason Kottke posted it to his weblog. Either you know about Kottke or you don't. Many journalists do. He's an authentic low-key tastemaker. 2. I shared the map on Flickr with a CC by-SA license. Which mean…

My map of the most frequent occupational surnames in Europe [1] also went viral in 2015. When I posted it on Reddit, newspapers from Ireland (they asked me for permission to reprint it) to Greece (nobody else asked) and countless people on Facebook republished it. Well, everybody has a surname, an occupation, and a country.

Late advice: when making a viral image, put your URL on it :-)

[1] https://marcinciura.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/smiths-millers-...

Re: Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

#13

Post by NelsonMinar »

fryktelig wrote: post #10
NelsonMinar wrote: post #9

I had a map go viral in 2013, a map of US rivers. Here's the Daily Mail article about it, the apotheosis of virulence. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342083/The-veins-n... Two things made it go viral. 1. Jason Kottke posted it to his weblog. Either you know about Kottke or you don't. Many journalists do. He's an authentic low-key tastemaker. 2. I shared the map on Flickr with a CC by-SA license. Which mean…

Great post! Is the GitHub project also still available?

Thanks! The GitHub project is still available but is many years out of date now. I did this when vector tiles were new, there's now really good software packages out there. Some of the ideas of cleaning and simplifying the data may still be useful though.

https://github.com/NelsonMinar/vector-river-map

Re: Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

#14

Post by ianburrell »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #9

I had a map go viral in 2013, a map of US rivers. Here's the Daily Mail article about it, the apotheosis of virulence. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342083/The-veins-n... Two things made it go viral. 1. Jason Kottke posted it to his weblog. Either you know about Kottke or you don't. Many journalists do. He's an authentic low-key tastemaker. 2. I shared the map on Flickr with a CC by-SA license. Which mean…

Great story. I think the artist is Tamsie Ringler.

Re: Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

#15

Post by NelsonMinar »

ianburrell wrote: post #14
NelsonMinar wrote: post #9

I had a map go viral in 2013, a map of US rivers. Here's the Daily Mail article about it, the apotheosis of virulence. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342083/The-veins-n... Two things made it go viral. 1. Jason Kottke posted it to his weblog. Either you know about Kottke or you don't. Many journalists do. He's an authentic low-key tastemaker. 2. I shared the map on Flickr with a CC by-SA license. Which mean…

Great story. I think the artist is Tamsie Ringler.

thank you, you're right and my edit window has closed. Sorry Tamsie!

Re: Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?

#16

Post by narski »

I read this as virility and expected something very different. So I'm going to comment as though it said "Virility in cartography".

A virile map has monsters, and beckons a boy to grab his stick (gleaming steel) and hop aboard the patio (great ship with full sails) and set the neighborhood alight in delight fighting pirates.

He devises elaborate dilemmas and improvises wilely against his barbarous captors, even as the governors of his native country conspire against him, or wonders what strange countries lie just beyond the edge of the words "the known world".

Or maybe the sea is made of stars, and he envisions gayly springtime planets, or dark winter stars that become dragons across the nebulae.

Idk, even then, maybe there's a frontier beyond the final one - where consciousness melts between the fabrics of little realities, each with their own cutely crafted logic, and he drifts to a new dream where 1 + 1 is 3 and it only makes sense that way.

Idk. ChatGPT raised me and I'm afraid I'm becoming my father, who then will I raise to look like me? If only I had a map of the ages to not fear myself.

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