Look, we all like to think we’re smart, informed global citizens, but we have to admit, we were definitely out of the loop on this one: Turns out there are a whole lotta people in Indonesia!
Almost 275 million, actually! Good Lord!
We obviously already knew that China, India, and the U.S. were the major heavy hitters nations, population wise, but it turns out that Indonesia, one of the more random-ass countries out there, somehow comes in right after the U.S. as the fourth most populous country in the world. Seriously! Who knew?!? Honestly, we can barely picture it on a map, and we sure as hell don’t know who’s hanging out there or what in God’s name they’re up to. We’ve met tons of people from India and China, not to mention Mexico and Japan and Nigeria and all the rest of those big-deal countries, but we can count all the Indonesians we know on one hand. And yet there seem to be hundreds of millions of them walking around! Wild!
For a country that literally has more people than all of western Europe combined, Indonesia seems to be keeping a hella low profile.
We’re going to be totally honest and say that the country Indonesia crosses our minds probably less than once a year, which seems kind of wrong now that we know that its capital, Jakarta, is considered the second-most populous metropolitan area in the entire world (what?!). It really makes you wonder what the vibe is over there, as, frankly, pop culture hasn’t really given us a clear picture of what Indonesia is like. Apparently most Indonesians are Muslim, which is not something we knew. But is that our fault? Shouldn’t at least a few Indonesian people be, like, super famous? According to the internet, their biggest superstar seems to be a badminton player named Taufik Hidayat, who we are sorry to say we have literally never heard of.
Also, what about well-known, country-specific exports? Like, do they have some sort of Belgian waffle-type situation? Some popular food or product that the world recognizes as distinctly Indonesian? Not gonna lie, we’re drawing a blank here!
Damn. Truly nuts how many people they’ve got over there. We had no idea. We can’t be the only ones who weren’t aware, right? Let us know in the comments!
