Reddit brought back r/place. And if you aren't aware of r/place, you should know that it was one of the most of exciting social experiments of internet history in 2017.

The Internet brings us together, for better or worse. Whether it’s creating beautiful, crowd-sourced art, standing against Wall Street corruption, connecting with old family and friends, there are pros and cons of the World Wide Web™. What is the holy spirit of the Internet's yin and yang act, you might ask? Reddit. On April 1, we saw the long-awaited return of a subreddit that embodied the best and worst of the Internet: r/Place. I'm sure you've heard of it, maybe even seen some of it, and wondered what the hell was going on.

What is r/Place?

r/Place is a social experiment that launched on Reddit back in 2017. Its founder, Josh Wardle (founder of Wordle, ever heard of it?) called r/Place "a screenshot of the Internet at this moment in time." Five years later, on April 1, 2022, the subreddit made its massive and triumphant return. r/Place offers a giant, open canvas that allows anyone and everyone to place one colored pixel. Each pixel has its own timer, meaning no individual or group can endlessly spam their shapes, which forces either coordination between users (if you want beauty), or absolute chaos, if that's what you're into. r/Place mixes art, teamwork, and sheer randomness into an awe-inspiring tapestry that the designer in me finds truly beautiful.

In short it was ~ An experiment that was conducted by Reddit where they provided a huge online canvas for the redditors, and observe what they can collectively come up with in 72 hours.

The catch was that each user could edit only one pixel every 15 minutes! So once you've placed your pixel, you had to wait for a few minutes before placing another one.

Soon after launch, redditors within and across diff communities were working together (and sometimes against one another) to create upon the canvas. Several factions emerged, trying to conquer and defend their territories. (r/bluecorner and The Void being the infamous ones)

Behold: r/Place, in all of its chaotic glory.

Who are the Main Players in r/Place?

It’s a mix between Reddit users and members of other online communities, with heavy participation and mobilization from streamers. Many streamers have rallied their viewers to grab a slice of the canvas. As you can imagine, this resulted in some tense battles for real estate, but also some truly shocking and beautiful coordinated pieces.

Providing an empty canvas to millions of anonymous internet users? Surely nothing right could come out of it, right? Turns out, humans are inherently collaborative, and the result was nothing short of a work of art!

After 72 hours, over a million redditors placed 16.5 million pixels to transform a simple, white, 1000×1000-pixel canvas into a beautiful collage of communities, nations and fandoms. Check out the timelapse of how it was created

In case you're interested to check out a high-res version of r/place, here's a link. Go ahead, zoom in and see if you can recognise the nations, fandoms and internet culture references!

This image went on to mark its place as a monumental piece of work on the Internet landscape. I don't think any other internet experiment has come close to being as influential as this one.

I wasn't aware of this when it happened in 2017, but I was excited that they're bringing back r/place this year. I hope some of your pixels contributed towards another impactful work of internet art.

What are the Biggest Stories of this Great Canvas?

I’d like to focus on a few top-tier streamers who all took radically different approaches to r/Place. There's PaymoneyWubby, a Just Chatting streamer and up and coming Fortnite “pro,” Ludwig Ahgren, who is famous for, of course, being Esquire's 2021 Streamer of the Year (we hear its the second-most-coveted award in the streamer community) and XQC, a Canadian streamer, former Overwatch Pro.

These three, much like van Gogh and Picasso, all have drastically different approaches to their art. We’ll start with Wubby, the technical. Wubby mobilized his army, while Twitch tech darling TT created an in-browser extension. The extension turned an area of the pixel graph into a sort of paint by numbers system. It showed everyone where the wrong colors were, and what colors they needed to replace them with. But only in the said quadrant. This tactic led to not only a crisp emote from Wubby's community, but also a team-up with streamers Will Neff and Mizkif to create a beautiful memorials to Reckful, a Twitch streamer who passed away in 2020. It's truly a masterpiece—and a beautiful example of community and technology working in unison for the greater good.

Meanwhile, Ludwig created some stunning pieces with his community. But their art is more like a visual embodiment of that scene in Whiplash where J.K Simmons loses it. It’s madness. But what they've built is beautiful. Then, there's XQC. The monster. He brought destruction. XQC mobilized his massive audience in coordinated attacks of black holes swallowing art. The art has since been rebuilt. Most is even stronger for it. XQC is the New York back alley artist who calls arson his sculpture. But hell, it sure made things exciting.

These are far from the only people involved. There's been wars between communities, countries, and streamers hilarious and frightening shows of force. One thing that's for sure? This was some of the most fun I’ve had on the Internet in years.

Miscellaneous Items of Interest

BGL (Big Green Line): No idea where this came from, or where this was going. But it was an ominous, laser-like green line that people just sort of kept building.

Act of French Aggression: France had its flag nicely planted on top of the portrait, before taking a massive chunk of land in the bottom left area. The French consistently attacked anyone who tried to destroy either region. It was a blast to watch streamers try to learn enough French—or tap into their French knowledge—for negotiation and peace treaties.

After an unforgettable four days, r/Place fades to white.

The White Void

On Monday evening, r/Place came to a random, stunning end. The community was suddenly left with only one color option: White. The r/Place community proceeded to erase all of the work they did over the weekend. It was surprisingly sweet and reflective, wonderfully concluding a phenomenal experiment. Like many of r/Place's admirers, I hope it becomes a yearly thing, opposed to something we only see every half decade. r/Place brought new collaborations between streamers, broke language barriers, gave way to more than a few incredible stories, and created some damn fine art while doing it.

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Quote of the day ~ There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do.

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