Find Your r/Place
content warning: mature language included
If Reddit is the front page of the internet and the Olympics represent international cooperation, then r/Place is the Olympics of the internet. r/Place is an April Fools’ Day project created in 2017 by Josh Wardle, who also created the viral game Wordle. The project was brought back again for April Fools’ Day 2022, five years after its first occurrence. For those that aren’t familiar with this project, r/Place is a subreddit where, for a few days starting on April 1st, any Reddit user can place one colored pixel on a massive blank canvas every 5 minutes. When millions of users are placing their individual pixels at the same time, you get both incredible collaboration and what can only be described as fierce battles over who gets to claim part of the canvas. The project is open to anyone, as long as they have a Reddit account, and while you could feasibly spend the time to create a small art piece on your own, it is much more common for internet communities, both internal and external to Reddit, to work together to design, create, and defend a section of the canvas from other communities who try to take over that space for their own art. This year, some of the biggest communities battling for space on r/Place were formed around gaming live streamers like Ludwig Ahgren and XQC, who had a peak average viewer count of around 63k and 68k respectively during this year’s run of r/Place. Twitch streamers Mizkif, Will Neff, and PaymoneyWubby brought their communities together to create a memorial to Reckful, a streamer who passed away in 2020, towards the bottom left of the final canvas.
This year’s canvas started at 1,000 x 1,000 pixels, like the original 2017 canvas, but was expanded twice throughout the event until it reached 2,000 x 2,000 pixels. Reddit also increased the color options from the original 2017 palette which gave users more options to create some incredible pieces of art, including a remake of a Rembrandt painting titled The Night Watch and a frame from Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. The biggest surprise this year, however, was the ‘white out’ of the entire canvas that happened after the event ended. At the end of the 72 hours allotted to r/Place this year, Reddit changed all color options to white, and all users participated in the erasing of everything that had been created thus far. Even as this white-out began, the global internet community came together once more to write “BONER” across the center of the canvas in white before everything was finally consumed and the canvas was clean again. After the project ended this year, Reddit user u/kaixinsoh posted a breakdown of how often each color was used in the final canvas (before the white out of 2022). A multitude of other data-driven projects related to r/Place are listed here, as well as the datasets themselves and different time-lapses of the project, including its two expansions and the twist ending.
While r/Place in 2017 was certainly the most viral thing on the internet for its duration, this year’s project dominated Twitter and reached mainstream journalism and even some international politicians. The Washington Post reported on r/Place this year, asserting that “Reddit’s r/Place shows that to have a voice online, you must be part of a group,” and revealing that, by the end of the 72-hour time window, “nearly 72 million tiles were placed by over 6 million users, at a pace of more than 2.5 million tiles placed per hour.” Esquire published an article explaining what r/Place is and where the big communities were coming from this year. They also mention a few of their favorite features of the canvas, including what they call an “Act of French Aggression.” The Washington Post also discusses this incident, which began with a misunderstanding between major Twitch streamers. When British streamer Jack Manifold had his community put 3D glasses on other communities’ work, previously mentioned Canadian streamer XQC mistook it as an attack from the French community and sparked a war over the bottom left corner of the expanded canvas. At one point, French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour tweeted to congratulate the French community for defending such a large area of the canvas and urged them to continue.
Some other notable contributions to the canvas this year include a section in the upper left dedicated to support for Ukraine as they remain at war with invading Russian armies, a small Canadian flag towards the left of the canvas that was constantly fighting to maintain itself, a “black void” that made a return from the 2017 canvas and periodically attempted to take over large areas, and thousands of tiny Among Us icons littered throughout the whole canvas. Reddit user u/Tryonex posted a final count of these icons and estimates the total number at about 3.5k, but I would argue that if you go looking, you’ll find a lot more than were highlighted in this count. I was even able to find the logo for the San Jose Sharks, my local hockey team, right next to the clashing lightsabers of the Star Wars: Episode III recreation. There are national flags from dozens of countries littered throughout the canvas, as well as all sorts of pride flags from the LGBTQ+ community. Characters and icons from several video games are also represented here, including Minecraft, Undertale, Stardew Valley, OSU!, and, of course, Among Us.
Once r/Place ended on April 4th, 2022, there were of course many discussions that popped up about the event and its past, present, and future. Many Reddit users were thankful for the increase in space and color choice this year, and are hoping that any future r/Place instances continue to expand so new communities that pop up around the internet can represent themselves without covering up the old ones. Some users want r/Place to become an annual event, while others argue that holding it every 5 years maintains its novelty and excitement and allows enough time for the landscape and culture of the internet to completely change. The white-out at the end inspired many users to reflect on the collaborative aspect of r/Place, and while some believe Reddit should have just locked the canvas at the end of the event as they did in 2017, it seems like most people appreciated the reminder that, at the end of the day, everyone participating was just placing dots on a square. It will be interesting to see what twist Reddit comes up with for its next r/Place event, considering people will be expecting another white-out or similar ending. If it was up to me, I would suggest the end of the next r/Place randomizes all colors so that, instead of a white-out erasing everything on the canvas, it descends into pure chaos and color that eventually renders the canvas unrecognizable from its final official state.
As a social experiment, r/Place does prove that communities formed on the internet have sufficient organization and motivation to work together to defend even a small portion of a massive global project. It also proves that, while arguments and battles might arise, the internet (with some moderation from the r/place admins) has the capacity to be a friendly and positive space for people to interact and collaborate based on mutual interests. Given an intimidatingly large blank canvas, people of the internet came together this year to create a true masterpiece of creativity, community, and culture. I can’t wait to see what the next r/Place brings, what it reveals about the trajectory of the internet, and what communities find themselves most engaged in battles over their place.
