🔗 Valeriepieris Circle

🔗 Internet culture

The Valeriepieris circle is a South China Sea-centered circular region on the world map that is about 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) in radius and contains more than half the world’s population. It was named after the Reddit username of Ken Myers, a Texas ESL teacher who first drew attention to the phenomenon in 2013. The map became a meme and was featured in numerous forms of media.

In 2015, the circle was tested by Danny Quah, who verified the claim but moved the circle slightly to exclude most of Japan, and used a globe model rather than a map projection as well as more specific calculations. He calculated that, as of 2015, half of the world's population lived within a 3,300-kilometer (2,050 mi) radius of the city of Mong Khet in Myanmar.

The most common visual of the circle, originally used by Myers and also featured by io9 and Tech in Asia, used the Winkel tripel projection.