Reddit's r/place is back – but we're not sure if that's a good or a bad thing yet. The community was busy being creative, letting their anger out, and simply having a good time. Here's the best (or worst?) of it!
Reddit's r/place is a community project where users can place single pixels on a canvas to create a message, an image or whatever else they can come up with – but not alone. It's a collaborative effort, in which users can only place a single pixel once every five minutes, and so they need to work together to make any significant progress.
The timing of r/place's arrival is quite poor this year, though, with many users still furious about Reddit's recent API changes. According to some, these changes are a direct attack on the community-led philosophy of Reddit. And the protests around this issue have now spilled onto r/place...
- Totally off-topic but I mean well: did you get your Amazon Prime free-trial yet?
Community Effort Pays Off
Even though r/place's canvas is changing all the time, there are lots of little things to discover as well as the big art pieces that immediately catch users' attention. It's easy to get lost in the sheer amount of little projects, so here's a little overview!
As expected, the infamous German efficiency shows itself again. The Germans kinda took over r/place in 2022 as well and take up the tradition once more this year, it seems. And for a short while, they even tried to remind the Brazilians of the World Cup in 2014 (as if they forgot...).
At the same time, the community fulfilled their promise of "protest art" against CEO u/spez. Lots of "encouragement to make love to himself", for lack of a better term, and a memorial for the third party apps that got killed off by Reddit's new API policy. The French even went so far as to bring back their guillotine – not sure if that's concerning or kind of impressive?
It's definitely worth a shot to visit r/place every once in a while. It's mesmerizing watching the users work, seeing how quickly the canvas can change or even participate in a piece.
If you don't have the time to sit there all day and watch, here's a timelapse from r/place's first 24 hours:
Official r/place canvas timelapse: day 1 by u/reddit_irl in place