40 Times People Posted Pics That Kindled Our Fascination With The World, As Shared On This Online Group

Patrick, a surveyor, map-maker, and the founder of another huge geography-related subreddit, told us that "geography is a way to systematically understand the world we live in."

"For anyone that wants to explore and discover the world, they must first understand geography," he told Bored Panda about why geography is so important.

We were very curious about what Patrick prioritizes when drawing maps himself. "When I am making maps I am thinking about all the subtleties of the geography I am mapping. Such as the ways some coastlines will curve in certain places or names of places I've never heard of before," he shared a bit about his process.

"It gives me new ideas of places to visit. For me, accuracy is the most important thing as I've been trained as a land surveyor."

Bored Panda also wanted to know how Patrick would go about convincing someone that learning geography is vital in a world where we can pretty much just Google everything that we need to know about the world and we have access to maps on our phones.

"This is difficult because the omnipresence of the internet has made most people take geography for granted," he said. "However, understanding geography helps you make connections and feeds your imagination. If you really want to increase your vision and understanding of the world it must be based in understanding geography."

Geography used to be one of the challenging yet rewarding subjects we learned back in school. Obviously, part of that meant committing the names of all the countries (and their capital cities) in the world, as well as names of rivers, seas, and other geographical features, to memory. And that meant a lot of work and anxiety when you were tested in front of the entire class.

And while some students definitely enjoyed all that, others found it stressful. What we really enjoyed doing was drawing maps and learning about all the different systems working in-sync on the planet. From how mountains form to how rivers ‘work’ and beyond.

The r/geography subreddit is an academic community, so the posts there have to reflect that. “Geography is the study of the earth and its features, inhabitants, and phenomena, and goes far beyond simple location identifications on a map or general trivial information such as capital and country names,” the team running everything writes.

“Geographers have a special understanding about the Earth and global systems and use analytical skills and applied methods to answer questions about human and physical phenomena. In short, geographers are particularly good at determining the ‘Why of Where.’”

Around since mid-Autumn of 2008, r/geography has carved out a nice niche for itself. At the time of writing, the sub had 157.7k members. There are actually a ton of geography-related subreddits (which makes our inner geeks really happy), and they’re all listed in r/geography’s sidebar.

So if you want to go down the rabbit hole and learn something new while being amazed by all the impressive photos from our planet, you’re given the keys to so much knowledge, all on a silver plate. Just keep in mind it’s like going on Wikipedia: before you know it, it’s several hours later and you totally got way too enraptured by what the digital library has to offer.

The r/geography subreddit encourages discussions of all branches of the subject, suggests that users link to original sources, and asks that all members assign a post flair when submitting something. Meanwhile, anyone with a degree in geography can ask the mods for a custom flair for their specific area of expertise which is actually a super cool idea and we hope more subs do this.

We feel like academically-focused subs are more important now than ever. With access to the internet, we have the ability to learn pretty much anything about anything, but there’s a downside to this. As information can spread very quickly, misinformation can, too. (Sometimes, even faster than facts.)

While being skeptical of information and double-checking things yourself are an important part of the scientific tradition, there comes a point where questioning well-established facts and mistrusting everyone and everything turns from quirky to stubborn.