Jump to content

R/place

This is a good article. Click here for more information.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jeuno (talk | contribs) at 04:34, 5 April 2022 (→‎2022: Sorry but this is not a reliable source.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Place
Logo of the original 2017 experiment
Logo of the 2022 experiment
A complete picture of Place 2022, day 4, just moments before the picture was filled with a white void.
OwnerReddit
URLreddit.com/r/place
RegistrationReddit account required
Users2017: Over 1 million
2022: Over 6 million
LaunchedOriginal launch: April 1, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-04-01).
Rebooted: April 1, 2022; 2 years ago (2022-04-01).
Current statusEnded

Place was a collaborative project and social experiment hosted on the social networking site Reddit that began on April Fools' Day 2017 and was revived again after 5 years on April Fools' Day 2022. The experiment involves an online canvas located at a subreddit called r/place, which registered users could edit by changing the color of a single pixel from a 16-color palette. After each pixel was placed, a timer prevented the user from placing any pixels for a period of time varying from 5 to 20 minutes.[1][2]

The 2017 experiment was ended by Reddit administrators about 72 hours after its creation, on April 3, 2017. Over 1 million users edited the canvas, placing a total of approximately 16 million tiles, and, at the time the experiment was ended, over 90,000 users were actively viewing or editing. The experiment was commended for its representation of the culture of Reddit’s online communities, and of Internet culture as a whole.

On March 28, 2022, Reddit announced a reboot of Place, beginning on April 1, 2022. It lasted for four days.[3][4]

Experiment

The swatches available during the 2017 experiment
The swatches available during the 2022 experiment

The experiment was based in a subreddit called /r/place, in which registered users could place a single colored pixel (or "tile") on an empty canvas of one million (1000x1000) pixel squares, and wait a certain amount of time before placing another.[5] In 2017 the waiting time varied from 5 to 20 minutes throughout the experiment, and the user could choose their pixel’s color from a palette of sixteen colors.[6]

2017

The early hours of the experiment were characterized by random pixel placement and chaotic attempts at image creation.[6] Among the first distinct sections of the canvas to emerge were a corner of entirely blue pixels (named "Blue Corner") and a homage to Pokémon.[7] As the canvas developed, some established subreddit communities, such as those for video games, sports teams and individual countries, coordinated user efforts to claim and decorate particular sections.[6][8]

A lattice of alternating light green and green pixels separated by the black background.
The "green lattice" seen in both the original 2017 and revived 2022 experiments

Other sections of the canvas were developed by communities and coordination efforts created specifically for the event. Several works of pixel art sprouted from the collaboration of these communities, varying from fictional characters and internet memes to patriotic flags, LGBT flags, and recreations of famous pieces of artwork such as the Mona Lisa[9] and The Starry Night.[10][11][12] Several "cults" also formed to create and maintain various emblematic features such as a black void, green lattice, the aforementioned blue corner and a multi-colored "rainbow road".[13] At the time of the experiment’s end on April 3, 2017, over 90,000 users were viewing and editing the canvas,[5] and over one million users had placed a total of approximately 16 million tiles.[6]

2022

On March 28, 2022, a reboot of Place was announced. It began on April 1, 2022, and lasted for four days.[14] As of Sunday night, nearly 72 million tiles were placed by over 6 million users, at a pace of more than 2.5 million tiles placed per hour.[15] Unlike in 2017, individual subreddits immediately began to coordinate pixel art, and large communities were formed on Discord and Twitch in attempts to create, defend, and destroy territory. There was a sixfold increase in the number of users on Reddit between the two experiments (from about 1 million in the 2017 iteration compared to 6 million in 2022). Different communities collaborated and formed alliances through Discord as well as subreddits.[16] Large streamers on Twitch also participated by instructing thousands (in some cases hundreds of thousands) of their viewers to mark their logos and symbols.[17][18] In response to the project's popularity, Reddit doubled the canvas's size and expanded the color palette on days 2 and 3.[17][19] On the fourth day, the palette was reduced to only white, with which the entire canvas was blanked out.[20]

There were many attacks and reprisals from various factions, with Twitch streamer xQcOW (aka Félix Lengyel) being particularly impactful, although he received death threats for griefing, claiming he had received more death threats in a single hour than he had received in six years of streaming.[21][22][23] The French community was particularly dominant, also making strong use of Twitch to coordinate pixel placement, although it was alleged they were botting, with many of the pixels placed on their territory being brand-new accounts with similar names (many of which being in English, not French).[24]

From the get-go, Place was used to establish support for Ukraine in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.[25] Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was depicted with sunglasses, and it was suspected that Russian bots were used in a vain attempt to deface Zelenskyy's visage, although this attack was thwarted.

Like in 2017, a lot of artwork was nationalistic, often combining flags with their country's landmarks, celebrities, technology, and popular exports. This was particularly evident in the case of France, the United States, and Germany.

2022 also saw the return of the Blue Corner, the void, and the green lattice (although all in diminished capacity). There was again promotion for 2007 video game osu!.

Impostors from the game Among Us were hidden throughout various images in the canvas as easter eggs by a large faction of Reddit users, usually blending them in with their surroundings. They could be found hidden in the Arc de Triomphe, the shading of TotalBiscuit's face, the triangle for Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, and many other images.

Reception

2017

File:Placefinal-800x800.png
The final product of the original 2017 Place

Place was commended for its colorful representation of the Reddit online community. The A.V. Club called it "a benign, colorful way for Redditors to do what they do best: argue among each other about the things that they love".[26] Gizmodo labelled it as a "testament to the internet's ability to collaborate".[27] A number of commentators described the experiment as a broader representation of Internet culture.[28] Some also commented on the apparent relationship between the makeup of the final canvas and the individual communities within Reddit, which exist independently but cooperate as part of a larger community.[26] Newsweek called it "the internet's best experiment yet",[6] and a writer at Ars Technica suggested that the cooperative spirit of Place represented a model for fighting extremism in internet communities.[29] The experiment did receive some criticism for the lack of protection from bot usage and the automated placing of pixels.[30]

2022

Place was brought back on April 1, 2022,[31][32] and ended on April 4, 2022.[4]

Once again, the response from user and critics was mostly positive. Twitch streamer Mizkif tweeted, "I've loved every second of r/place. Been some of the most fun i've had in 3 years of streaming".

"People are much more into online communities ever since COVID became a thing,” Casey Holmes, a Twitch streamer in Austin, said. “Social media is in a different place than it was before the last time Place came out."[33]

However, the amount of new accounts and lack of karma requirements or even email verification meant that botting was again rife, something that was criticized heavily by Reddit users, claiming it was a way to increase membership at the cost of artistic integrity.

See also

References

  1. ^ "How We Built r/Place". Upvoted. Archived from the original on 17 April 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  2. ^ Rappaz, Jérémie (2018). "Latent Structure in Collaboration: The Case of Reddit r/place". International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. arXiv:1804.05962. Archived from the original on 2 July 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  3. ^ Lyons, Kim (28 March 2022). "Reddit is bringing back r/Place, its April Fools' Day art experiment". The Verge. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  4. ^ a b "Place has ended". Reddit. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
  5. ^ a b Weinberger, Matt (4 April 2017). "Over 1 million Reddit users waged a virtual war to create this bizarre work of art with 16 million pixels". Business Insider Australia. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  6. ^ a b c d e Cuthbertson, Anthony (11 April 2017). "From Van Gogh to a marriage proposal, Reddit Place was the internet's best experiment yet". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 13 April 2017. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
  7. ^ Weinberger, Matt. "Reddit's new 'Place' is forcing millions of users to work together to make something great". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  8. ^ Tindale, James (4 April 2017). "Reddit Place: April Fool's experiment reveals how the internet sees Australia". The Australian. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  9. ^ Litherland, Kristina T. (29 March 2022). "Instruction vs. emergence on r/place: Understanding the growth and control of evolving artifacts in mass collaboration". Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 122, Sept. 2021, art. 106845. Archived from the original on 29 March 2022. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
  10. ^ "Eagles, Flyers represented in final version of Reddit's 'Place' social experiment". PhillyVoice. 3 April 2017. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  11. ^ Oxford, Nadia. "Here's the Best Game Fan Art from Reddit's r/place Canvas". USgamer. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  12. ^ Voon, Claire (12 April 2017). "More Than a Million Strangers Collaborate, Pixel by Pixel, on a Digital Canvas". Hyperallergic. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  13. ^ Hathaway, Jay (3 April 2017). "A new phenomenon is taking over Reddit—here's what you should know about it". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 11 August 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  14. ^ "Bringing Back r/place". Reddit. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
  15. ^ "Internet communities are battling over pixels". Washington Post. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  16. ^ Mauran, Cecily (4 April 2022). "Ukraine supporters fight for pixels on Reddit's r/place". Mashable. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  17. ^ a b Lorenz, Taylor (4 April 2022). "Internet communities are battling over pixels". The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
  18. ^ Williams, Demi (4 April 2022). "xQc reports getting numerous death threats over Reddit's 'Place' canvas". NME. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  19. ^ Gach, Ethan (5 April 2022). "Reddit Is Hosting What May Be The Internet's Most Wholesome Fan War". Kotaku. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  20. ^ "Texas symbolism is embarrassingly absent in Reddit's big art project r/Place". www.mysanantonio.com. 4 April 2022. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  21. ^ Datuin, Sage (4 April 2022). "xQc says he's received more death threats in April than past 6 years combined thanks to viral r/Place art streams". Dot Esports. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  22. ^ "xQc reports getting numerous death threats over Reddit's 'Place' canvas". NME. 4 April 2022. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  23. ^ "xQc receives death threats after Reddit Place stunt". WIN.gg. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  24. ^ https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/tvnprh/rplace_france_bot_disaster/. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  25. ^ Mauran, Cecily (4 April 2022). "Ukraine supporters fight for pixels on Reddit's r/place". Mashable. Retrieved 5 April 2022.
  26. ^ a b Purdom, Clayton (3 April 2017). "Reddit gave its users something to fight over besides anime and cucks". A.V. Club. Archived from the original on 3 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  27. ^ Serrels, Mark. "Place Was The Internet, In All Its Glory". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  28. ^ Rhode, Jason. "Redditors Collaborate to Create the Iconic Picture of Our Time". pastemagazine.com. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  29. ^ Machkovech, Sam. "Did Reddit's April Fool's gag solve the issue of online hate speech?". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  30. ^ "Reddit's April Fools' Joke Spawned a Surprisingly Awesome Social Experiment". Nerdist. 4 April 2017. Archived from the original on 6 April 2017. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
  31. ^ Lyons, Kim (28 March 2022). "Reddit is bringing back r/Place, its April Fools' Day art experiment". The Verge. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  32. ^ "Reddit relaunches its April Fools artwork that anyone can add to". The Independent. 1 April 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.
  33. ^ "Internet communities are battling over pixels".
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R/place&oldid=1081071579"