r/place

The final product of the original 2017 r/place experiment

The early hours of the experiment were characterized by random pixel placement and chaotic attempts at image creation.[15] Among the first distinct sections of the canvas to emerge was a corner of entirely blue pixels (named "Blue Corner") and a homage to Pokémon.[16] As the canvas developed, some established subreddit communities, such as those for video games, sports teams and individual countries, coordinated their user efforts to claim and decorate particular sections.[15][17] This frequently created conflict between communities competing for space on the canvas.[18] Overall, thousands of communities were involved.[19]

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, such as fictional characters, Internet memes, flags, and recreations of famous pieces of artwork such as the Mona Lisa[20] and The Starry Night.[21][22][3] Several self-declared "cults" also formed to create and maintain various emblematic features such as the (black) void, the green lattice, the aforementioned blue corner, and a multi-colored "rainbow road".[23] At the time of the experiment's end on 3 April 2017, over 90,000 users were viewing and editing the canvas,[24] and over one million users had placed a total of approximately 16 million pixels.[5][18] An analysis found that the final version of the 2017 experiment consisted of art from over 800 communities.[25]

r/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",[15] and a writer at Ars Technica suggested that the cooperative spirit of r/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 where users used scripts and macros to automatically draw on the canvas.[30]

The final product of the 2022 r/place experiment

On 28 March 2022, a reboot of r/place was announced.[32] It began on 1 April 2022, and lasted for three and a half days, including two expansions of the canvas to allow for more space. The color palette was also expanded on the second and third days.[33][34] Unlike in 2017, individual subreddits immediately began to coordinate in designing pixel art, and large communities were formed on Discord and Twitch in attempts to expand existing art, replace defaced pixels, and superimpose new images over existing ones.[34][35] By the end of the 3.5-day experiment, 160 million pixel changes were operated by over 10.5 million users, at an average pace of about 2 million pixels placed per hour. Of these pixel changes, about 26 million were redundant (same color as previously on the same pixel, but by a different user). These numbers, extracted from the raw data, are not as is mentioned in these erroneous articles.[5][36] During the final few hours before the 2022 Place event ended, users became restricted to placing only white pixels. The entire canvas was gradually filled with white space, returning it to its original blank state.[37][38]

References to popular culture, Internet memes and politics were commonly visible.[39] Fandom communities participated by creating representative illustrations of their respective subcultures.[36] Similar to 2017, much of the artwork was country flags.[5] This included support for Ukraine in the Russian invasion of Ukraine,[34] where Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was depicted with sunglasses.[5]

Popular streamers on Twitch intervened in the event by instructing their viewers to quickly draw logos and symbols, often over existing images.[5][40] The streamer Félix Lengyel, better known online as xQc, peaked with 233,000 concurrent viewers on his stream because of the event, a personal record.[41][35] Lengyel's viewers would often get banned by Reddit admins,[41] and Lengyel said that he had received more death threats in a single hour than he had received in six years of streaming.[42][40]

Reddit relaunched the r/place collaborative project on July 20, 2023, under the tagline "Right Place, Wrong Time", amid several unpopular decisions made by the company which had soured Reddit users, including one that had led to the API controversy which affected Reddit's third-party apps.[46][47] While announcing the return, Reddit stated: "Hey, what better time to offer a blank canvas to our communities than when our users and mods are at their most passionate… right?"[14]

Within the first day of the 2023 experiment, many writings of "fuck spez" ("spez" being Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's Reddit user name) were placed onto the canvas, some were large-sized, some were small-sized.[47] Another canvas writing, found among art of Germany, stated: "u/spez ist ein Hurensohn".[47][48] The Messenger website reported that an r/place artwork of "spez" under a guillotine was removed by Reddit; when The Messenger asked Reddit to comment, Reddit stated that it was enforcing its rules (which do not allow targeted hate of individuals).[14][49][50] Meanwhile, several other canvas writings simply stated "API".[46] There was also a canvas writing, "never forget what was stolen from us", which endorsed the Save3rdPartyApps community.[47] During canvas expansions, more protests against Huffman appeared, such as the message "spez = twat" done by users making British-themed art.[51]

In addition to art protesting Reddit, many of the early artworks were flags, plus a multi-colored canvas writing of "DICKS".[47] Among the most notable contributions came from users from the Touhou Project, osu! and Hatsune Miku subreddits,[52] who collaborated to re-create the shadow-art music video for "Bad Apple!!" on the canvas.[53] Artworks were also created featuring the game Genshin Impact, cats with sunglasses, a Pokémon card of Charizard, and a tribute to the deceased Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade.[48][50][51][54]

Reddit users collaborating to protest spez (Reddit's CEO) during the final hours of the 2023 experiment due to the 2023 Reddit API controversy.

The canvas was expanded six times, and the project concluded on July 25, 2023.[54] During the final hours, users were limited to placing greyscale-colored tiles.[55] Users coordinated to spell out "Fuck Spez" in giant white letters in the centre of the board as part of the protest.[48][55][56] The entire canvas was eventually filled with white space by the end of the project.[54]