The flag game

The Flag Game, otherwise known as Flag Collecting or The Flag Metric, is played among travelers, particularly backpackers or English teachers. Participants try to collect as many flags as they can.

Game play

In order to be awarded a flag, the player must engage in sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex who is a citizen of that country. A flag can only be awarded once for each country - e.g. Sleeping with five French girls only counts as one French flag.
Certain regions, such as Hong Kong, Quebec, or the Palestinian Territories, can be counted as separate flags if their population base is ethnically or culturally distinct. However, the person with whom you earn that flag must be a member of that particular ethnic group. So a player can only claim a Quebecois flag through a French-Canadian Quebecois, French Canadians from other provinces or Anglophones from Quebec do not count.
Bonus points are awarded for particularly rare or obscure flags, as well as having a strong diversity in your flags collected.

Disqualifications

A flag cannot be acquired if the player pays for the sex through cash or gifts. Flags cannot be purchased, and must be earned. However, drinks or dinner can be purchased for the potential flag, since this is part of standard dating procedure in many countries.
Transvestites cannot be counted towards a flag, no matter how convincing they appear.

Culture

Due to its informal nature, it is impossible to determine the origins of this game. Like many cultural phenomena, the main benefit to playing is to accumulate "bragging rights." Although it is widely known in backpacker circles around the world, the game has no organized international structure. Because of this, as well as the game's general seediness and the transient nature of its participants, the game is rarely mentioned in traditional media outlets. In other words, those who play rarely admit to it except in the presence of other backpackers. It's not the sort of thing you would expect to crop up on a CNN crawler ("In other news, Chris Sutherland of New Zealand has just shattered the international record for flag collecting").
However, this does not in any way diminish the game's veracity, nor its significance as a cultural phenomenon. Some backpackers live their lives by the game, organizing trips based on the highest density of different nations to enable more efficient flag collecting. Though hardly a tasteful way to spend your holidays, the game is an interesting comment on where the sexual dynamic of the first world has led. Discussions of the gender war or the dating war suddenly come to mind when considering how commodified sexual conquest has become - it's now being outsourced. On the other hand, the existence of such a sordid underground culture leads to questions about sexual repression in Western societies. Promiscuity, in many ways a natural human drive, has become so frowned upon that members of society feel the need to travel halfway around the world in order to escape the social castigation that comes with sexual openness.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu