Choose your difficulty

Australia has a somewhat threadbare welfare state, though is more of a social democracy than the UK. And snakes and spiders are easier to avoid than Tories.
- You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be killed by another human than an animal or insert in Australia.
  
  Well that just makes sense.
  Through selection pressures the only surviving Australians are highly venomous.
- Have you ever been fucked up by an Emu?
  
  Trick question, Emus don't leave behind survivors. Or witnesses.

Really? How displaced is your view if you consider the USA easy mode?
Also, fuck Mexico. Apparently.
- At the end of the day, while living in the US does have its share of issues, they absolutely do not compare to living in Africa.
  
  Not to downplay how horrible life can be anywhere for someone who’s not healthy, wealthy, and typical:
  Different by a factor of 187.
  187 years in South Sudan to equate a year income in the US.*
  Wiki GDP Per Capita PPP
  *edited, thanks below
  
  No, America bad. Lemmy doot left side. Calcium
  
  There's a bunch of African countries I would rather live than the US, although maybe not exactly South Africa or Congo...
- Haven't you heard? Mexico doesn't exist it is just drawn on the map to make people think that Canada and The United States are to the rest of the American Continent. Everyone who says they are from Mexico are just paid actors. /s
  Also they left out New Zealand, which will not come as a surprise for New Zealanders. They will probably be happy that they are even on the map.
  
  I can confirm that, I'm being paid to said I'm Mexican 🌮 viva México!!
  they pay me with tacos btw
- Mexico mode is only available once a year on May Fifth. It then disappears until next the next year.
- All of central america, the caribbean, greenland, japan, hawaii, and new zealand were all unaccounted for. Probably will be included in the dlc
  
  Probably called the settlers and shogun expansion.
- It might belong there depending on what they mean by easy. Its pretty vague
  
  It really depends on your race and starting stats
- How many countries would be easier than USA?
  
  Any country with actual welfare, a decent living wage minimum salary, normal Healthcare prices, a gun ban and a non-corrupt police system or at least less prone to corruption.
- Mexico is just the US with a yellow camera filter.
- USA is Easy mode. It's just that Western Europe, Australia, Japan, and Canada are Very Easy mode.
- and canada, USA plus canada is easy mode. Australia is on some shit right now, they deserve it.
  IDK what the others are except for europe and africa, which, yeah that's about right. Africa is a hot fucking minute away from some spicy shit at the moment, and the other one is probably the same.
  
  What?
- Or the former Bloc states

Mexico is so hard-as-fuck that was not included in the list.
- Japan, Greenland, Cuba, New Zealand too apparently
  
  New Zealand is just happy to be on the map.
- I used to work with a guy that moved from Mexico city after his favourite cafe got gunned down by the cartel, his neighbor's family got beheaded, and a family friend's daughter got kidnapped.
- It was a toxic server, PvP only. Glad it was banned
  
  Filled with hackers giving themselves infinite money glitches.
- Japan is unlocked after NG+. Korea (North and South) is sold separately as DLC.
- I mean, neither was new Zealand.

I'm gonna be real with you all, I'm in Australia and it's a little embarrassing how hard you think we have it over here compared to the shit I've heard from other places. Like don't fuck with the animals and don't put your hands in areas you can't see and you're golden. I've had to deal with random violence like three times in my 34 years here. It's pretty alright here.
- You can't fool me. I've seen your videogame prices.
  
  One of the reasons stuff costs more in Australia is that there's significantly more consumer protection. Steam originally didn't allow refunds at all, and were fined AU$3 million as a result.
  In Australia, it's illegal to say "no refunds" or only exchange or refund as store credit both for physical and digital goods, and customers are always allowed to get a repair, refund or replacement if the product has issues. In the case of a game, that would be things like:
  Game breaking bugs or bug that significantly affects the experience but don't completely break the game
  Changes that make the game behave significantly differently to how it was originally described on the site or in the documentation
  Games that initially support Linux but the company dropped Linux support later on, etc.
  Steam's policy of only refunding a purchase within 14 days of purchase and less than 2 hours of play time is also not legal in Australia. You can't have conditions like that on a refund policy. They have a separate refund policy specifically for Australia which excludes the 14 day / 2 hour limits.
  Appliances also have to last for as long as a 'reasonable consumer' thinks they should last. For example, even if your TV or fridge has a "1 year warranty", the manufacturer will still have to repair, refund, or replace it if it breaks down in 3 years, as a regular person would assume that a fridge or TV should last more than 3 years. The store or manufacturer has to cover the cost of picking it up and delivering a replacement. It's also illegal for a store to tell you that you have to contact the manufacturer - the place you bought the product from has to let you handle all warranty claims through them.
  
  Look you're right and the housing market is a catastrophe also
- You can't fool us. We know all of you are boxing kangaroos upsidedown just to get to work everyday.
  
  Wait do you guys not? Next you'll tell me you don't eat your national animal
- and don't put your hands in areas you can't see
  Serious question: do you check your bed before you crawl into it for the night? Like, what's the level of paranoia you guys have there? Does the room get a quick glance then you just go "yeah, I'm sure everything is fine"? Or do you turn all the lights on, rip the duvet up, and smack the bed frame to scare off any creepy crawlies that might be lingering about?
  
  Haha no not quite that paranoid. Nah it's mostly a rule for like moving stuff around in the garden and if you're in the bush or whatever. Like the shit you have to worry about will either let you know, or set up a home far away from you. Generally. So it's kind of another way of saying don't put you hand into a redback nest.
  Though saying that most people have had harrowing huntsman spider encounters, often in bed. They're the most common surprise as they actively move around to hunt prey, instead of building webs. They can't really hurt humans, aside from hiding behind your sun visor in the car and scaring you half to death, like my girlfriend had last year. They are a non zero statistic in cause of car accidents unfortunately.
  
  Probably the most I check in day to day life is just under the toilet seat before I sit on it. Haven't yet had a spider under there yet but have definitely heard of it. Otherwise just being careful of huntsmen when you have something like two sheets of iron or wood, as they love to be in between them.
  Have otherwise had little spiders come out from the car's crevices while driving and calmly pulled over to deal with it.
  Overall not really that paranoid or bad in Australia
- I think this meme is talking about how tough life is for any given organism in kind of a TierZoo sort of way.

Africa is harder than Australia. Not even close.
- maybe you just spawn in the middle of austrailia desert with nothing
- Thinking I'm on easy mode and then getting hit in the face with bear mace while crossing UCLA's campus.
  Thinking I'm on hard mode while I drive my Bentley through Plettenberg Bay.
  
  Easy, medium and hard mode are just how much money you're born into.

Little racist there my guy. Also, America is pretty "hard mode" for a lot of people.
- Difficulty in America is pretty much down to your initial stats.
  
  Initial stats and current location. Some places want you dead for being the way you were born.
- That's the interesting thing about empire, it's self similar. A whole class of people may grow up geographically in or near the core, but their experience of life has more in common with someone in the semi- or outer periphery in terms of access to necessities or stability of life.
- Is Bogan a race?

Life in the US is only easy for a small handful of people. Most of us consider it a good year if we got through it without crushing medical debt and retained all of our teeth. Is a third world country passing itself off as a first world country.
- At least US families can expect all their children not to die by tuberculosis or malaria or something.
  And fuck Australian magpies.
  
  Assuming the mother/baby don’t die in the hospital waiting room bathroom because the hospital refused treatment.
  
  Tb is back, haven’t you heard?
  
  On the other hand, US families can also expect their kindergarteners to have to participate in active shooter drills. Because, you know, active shooters are a thing. Screw that.

I'm pretty sure significant portions of the medium and hard difficulties could be flip-flopped and most of Australia's population doesn't live in the PvE warzone you're probably picturing in your head.

Maps without Japan.
- And New Zealand
- Fuck Japan.

Apparently there is no life in Mexico
- Just a yellow filter.
- Or greenland. Kinda accurate, really

Parts of Africa are definitely better than parts of medium tier
- Africa is kind of a big place. Asia is an even bigger place.

I know this is just a shit post but fuck is this eurocentric and a bit racist let me refer you to the world happiness rank. The Corruption Perceptions Index and This map of real GDP.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
- First of all: haha, funny, your nickname is in the OP
  Secondly: how are your links you referred us to showing that the joke made is eurocentric and racist? What's real GDP growth (that's what the map you linked showed) got to do with anything? Why is the corruption perception index any indication of how hard life is gonna be if you are born in a certain place? It doesn't show how much corruption there is or the effects of said corruption, just how corrupt things are perceived as.
  And regarding the happiness index.... Have you looked at the page? It lists almost exclusively countries within Europe, so that would support the joke, would it not?
  
  Here is the wiki article on Real GDP feel free. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_gross_domestic_product The take a way is you will see most of South America and parts of Africa are on par with the USA.
  Weirdly enough it is very hard to get corrupt politicians, civil servants, etc to check the yes box for the question are you corrupt. So corruption perception is used, which is actually pretty accurate. The local population is pretty good at noticing when they're being asked to pay a bribe or seeing that nepotism is present in government.
  If you were to look at the ranked list you would find that Uruguay, Barbados, Bhutan, and Botswana. Are all ahead of Greece, Montenegro, Romanian, Bulgaria, and Hungry.
  As for the happiness index did you actually scroll down to the full list? Yes most of the country you would expect to be high on the list. There are plenty of outliers, Costa Rica is higher than the USA; Uruguay is higher than France; El Salvador is higher than Italy, Malta, Spain, Estonia, and Poland; Honduras and China are higher than Croatia, Greece, and Bosnia and Hertzegovina. I am sure there are more but I hope you get how it does not support the joke.
  Is eurocentric and a little racist because it clearly states that the only countries worth living in are European or North America (except Mexico which apparently doesn't exist). This meme is basically saying living in Europe or the United States is the best and everywhere else is a shit hole country. Yet looking at the actual data we can see that is not true.
- Here's human rights index. Lots of different ways to measure things, none of them great.
  https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-rights-index-vdem
  Human development index matches decently except Australia
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
  
  Somos el mejor país de chile!
  
  One of the big problems with HDI is that it fails to consider inequality and non-income material conditions; a country with 1 person making 1B/y and 999 people living in abject poverty gets the same per capita GNI as a country of 1000 people making 1m/y who have free housing, transport, and healthcare.
  The latter obviously has better conditions for more people.
- GDP and GDP Growth are both useless metrics
  
  Yeah they are. That is why I used Real GDP Growth. It is still not a great metric but it is a little better than GDP and GDP Growth.
- I'm inclined to agree. While life is kinda good in Europe, it's getting more and more difficult to lead a somewhat wealthy and happy life here. And now the fucking Nazis are on the rise again, it makes me sick. I'd absolutely prefer to live in NZ or Australia but I don't want to tear my daughter away from her social surroundings just yet.
- https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=fiw&year=2024
  Freedom in the world index. IMO the best indicator of how easy it is to live in a specific place.
  While I wouldn’t call this shitpost accurate and I myself don’t really like it, you can’t say that the rough simplified categories don’t have any base.

When are we talking about, here? Much of Europe is a disease-ridden mosquito swamp if you go back a few thousand years.

Includes British Columbia in "easy mode".
Nah, BC looks pretty, but if you unprepared off the beaten trails/roads, they'll never find your body.
- I don't think we're talking about wilderness in general.... But housing and grocery prices are not particularly easy either.
  
  If we aren't talking about wilderness in general, then there is no reason for Australia to have it's own category.

This is clearly some kind of rage bait troll post. Don't acknowledge it and maybe they will just go away
- This particular meme is probably older than you are
  I don't like it very much, but I also know the OP's typical posting history (Picard Maneuver is pretty prolific on meme Lemmy) and I can say with some certainty that that ain't it, chief. At worst it's a bad take that the OP definitely didn't make themselves because I've seen this meme decades ago.
  Bad take and all though, it seems to have sparked some discussion here in the comments.
  
  age for sure makes all the difference in when a meme is appropriate
  as we know, the oldest memes and in-jokes are all the least racist and bigoted
  
  I am 42 years old, and I do not appreciate your condescending tone.
  ☆º°˚☆ Have a ηice ϑay ☆º°˚☆

The Galapagos deserves its own level at the top of this. It’s literally, “don’t eat any green apples you find on the island, okay?”
- What??
  
  The Galápagos is pretty much paradise. If you can, check it out some time.

I invested all my xp into sneak and went from medium to easy.

For some reason New Guinea is included with Australia, even though the western half is owned by Indonesia, and the eastern half is its own country. Either way with the civil war going on there at the moment I'd much rather be living in Australia!
- Those are geographic boarders not polticals ones. New Guinea is included because, like Australia the country, its part of the continent of Australia.
  
  Umm I don't think New Guinea is part of the Australian continent. I live in Australia and they definitely didn't teach us that in school
- If you're one of a tribe living in the jungle of West Papua, then yeah, it's basically survival of the fittest there with no electricity or modern amenities. If you're living in a city then it's no different than the rest of the region, but with small risks of armed conflict with the separatist group.

There's more than penguins in Antarctica.
What if I was a scientist? Or a piece of lab equipment?
- what if im oil?
  
  American armed forces enters the chat

A Certain Subsection Of Lemmy: "The Imperial Core(tm) makes life harder for the nations it exploits!"
Meme: "Life is harder in those nations."
ACSOL: "Are you some kind of racist!?"
- It's really mind-boggling.
  Also, ironically a bit ethnocentric to suggest that the challenges in the US or Europe are in any way on par with life in places like Brazil, India, Africa!

Penguin difficulty? Just git gud, scrub.
- Deep ocean difficulty: Pick 1 or more deities to pray to.

We talking wilderness of Canada or population centers? Cuz there ain't no way I'd go into Canadian bush without a shotgun.
- There is No way i go into an American City without a shotgun.
- Am Canadian - wtf?
  The worst part would be the Arctic but you have bigger problems than polar bears
  
  Bud, have you met a moose?
  They're the size of three deer and they have the personality of a Canadian Goose.

Penguin life
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Penguin life
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Western, good.
Everything else, bad.

You miscatagorized the US Hard is the correct category.