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    Where Britons think Chagos Islands are.


    Where Britons think Chagos Islands are.

    Posted by corbynista2029

    Bytes Europe

    View 37 Comments

    37 Comments

    1. hughsheehy on

      Was it the Diary of Adrian Mole that had his dad thinking that the Falklands were somewhere off Scotland?

    4. ZelWinters1981 on

      Middle of the Indian Ocean, south of India.

      But shoutout to the guy who put the pin *outside* of the map, in orbit.

    7. Mister_Barman on

      This actually isn’t too bad. Vast majority are in the area where the Chagos Islands are. Many votes in the Caribbean where we have multiple overseas territories which is a reasonable guess, and in the South China Sea, which makes sense because this China is central to the debate about the islands.

      The idea that “you cant oppose your country needlessly giving up territory that could harm national security and your position in the world unless you can pinpoint it on a map” is such a stupid take

    8. ThatNiceLifeguard on

      This is respectable. Most were close and many of the guesses that weren’t are clustered in spots that make logical sense.

    10. Nivaris on

      I don’t know why anyone would think that the Chagos Islands were located in the middle of a continent. Particularly Australia, there’s a rather big cluster there and I really can’t imagine why. Do they think there’s a huge lake in the outback containing the Chagos Islands?

    13. GuyfromKK on

      Interestingly, there is a cluster of highly concentrated answers around the Philippines. Why is that?

    17. LordLordie on

      To be honest I would’ve also had no clue whatsoever and would’ve put the dot somewhere around Indonesia. So they did a pretty good job there.

    20. omnipotentmonkey on

      the clustering near Greece is at the very least a reasonable attempt at deduction,

    22. AgileBlackberry4636 on

      I like that a sizable percentage of people looked for island on the land mass

    23. Truth-or-Peace on

      So, to summarize the main clusters, here are people’s guesses in order from most popular to least popular:

      1. The Chagos Islands are in the Indian Ocean. (Well done.)
      2. The Chagos Islands are near Mauritius. (*Very* reasonable guess if one’s been reading the news.)
      3. The Chagos Islands are in the Philippines. (Oops.)
      4. The Chagos Islands are near Guantánamo Bay. (Wrong, but interestingly wrong.)
      5. The Chagos Islands are in Indonesia. (Not a bad guess if one’s never heard of them.)
      6. The Chagos Islands are in the Australian Outback. (A bad guess *even* if one’s never heard of them.)

    24. gattomeow on

      British people tend to be much more geographically aware than most nationalities since the UK is a maritime country with lots of trade routes and a very active Royal Geographical Society.

      I bet that the average person in bigger countries like China, India, the USA and Russia is more cartographically challenged

    25. Rufus14811 on

      I genuinely have no clue how maps like these happen

      Surely most of these people are joking or misunderstood it right?? No way someone heard “island” and pointed to Mongolia or something unironically

    26. gattomeow on

      I’m guessing areas with land and seas were not labelled? Logically why would someone think an island was deep inland, unless in the middle of a lake.

    27. absoluteally on

      I want to know who the people are who thought these islands were in the middle of a continent. Was there some dodgy question phrasing that they used that they left off the final result of was there map to small for accurate clicks or did they ask in a way that lots of people took the piss.

    28. Amockdfw89 on

      I consider myself very good with map. I can probably point out 95% of the countries on earth

      But I never was able to master tiny islands

    29. Le_Atheist_Fedora on

      I consider myself a huge geography nerd and extremely knowledgeable about world geography and I’ve never heard of the Chagos Islands.

    30. thedisablednonce on

      I mean I love geography and visiting new counties but I didn’t really know where they was, I assumed it was between africa and Australia somewhere but I wouldn’t be shocked if you told me it was in the Caribbean

    31. Beginning_Source1509 on

      I actually find this preety unintresting

      like this says, “a lot of people dont know where an island that is really far away from them is”

      edit: I have just realised a bunch of people put something called island in the middel of continents

    35. Slow_Animator_7241 on

      It’s the fact so many Britons think islands are inland, I the word should tell you they will be in the sea 🤣

    36. LupusDeusMagnus on

      Brits been getting news about Chagos Islands very recently and they likely mention “Indian Ocean island with military bases being returned to the African island nation of Mauritius”. Basically giving away that it’s in the Indian Ocean, and probably near an island near Africa. They probably seen maps of it too.

       It’d be nice to compare with their guesses before the agreement.

    37. jkmapping on

      To be fair, I’m a fairly educated person in the world of Geography and I have never once heard the neame Chagos Islands. Turns out, it is the island group that contains Diego Garcia, somewhere even the most basic geography nerd knows. TIL, thank you.