Looking Back at r/Place (2024)

Josh Wardle & Justin Bassett
(u/powerlanguage & u/Drunken_Economist)

In just 72 hours, over a million redditors placed 16.5 million tiles to transform a simple, white, 1000×1000-pixel canvas into a surprisingly beautiful clash of communities, nations, ideologies, and fandoms. Because each user could only place one tile every five minutes, any single individual would have struggled to create a meaningful image on their own. However, through community collaboration, users quickly produced complex creations, surpassing all of our expectations about how this project would turn out once the 72 hours were up.

As with our previous April Fools’ projects The Button and Robin, Place was created to explore human interaction at scale. Because of their experiential (and temporal) nature, adequately summarizing these projects is always a challenge (though the fact that Place has a visual artifact does make this a little easier). Last week, we shared the technical story behind r/Place, so today we wanted to share a (very incomplete) collection of some of the amazing creativity that emerged from Place. We encourage you all to share your favorite moments in the comments. We have also released a complete dataset of Place data and are looking forward to seeing what emerges on r/dataisbeautiful.

What Is This Place?

If you have no idea what you’re reading right now, don’t worry, redditors have got you covered with a variety of summaries for you to dive into.

If you are wondering what all the images and iconography plastered across Place are, you may want to visit u/draemmli’s Place Atlas. The community-sourced, interactive map provides information and metadata about the different images that make up the final version of Place.

Looking Back at r/Place (1)

Surely This Will Not End Well…

Providing an empty canvas to millions of anonymous internet users? What could possibly go wrong? We knew there was an inherent risk to Place, but our previous projects have taught us to assume the best of the Reddit community. Fun outweighs fear. Part of the success of Place was due to the expectation that it would be largely self-policed. We thought that for every one person that wanted to do something negative, there would be thousands that wanted to overwrite that with something positive—and we were right. It turns out collaborating to make something bad is far harder than collaborating to make something good.

Factions, Alliances, & Destruction

Soon after it launched, redditors within and across different communities were working together (and sometimes against one another) to create upon the canvas. Collaboration was compelling.

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Countries staked their claim in Place, with geographical rivalries emerging. The European contingent had its share of scuffles but eventually arrived at a harmonious equilibrium.

Redditors’ national pride was evident throughout. Dutch users were more likely to place orange tiles, Australians loved green and yellow, and Germans efficiently stuck to black, yellow, and red. The color preferences of each of the top 100 countries in Place can be found in the Place dataset.

With so many factions and alliances, it’s hardly surprising to see hotspots wax and wane. Despite a number of tiles remaining untouched throughout, many tiles more closely resembled battlegrounds. The bottom-right corner, for example, switched colors 37,214 times by 23,798 unique users, as r/TheBlueCorner valiantly held on (including the final blue tile by u/NotZaphodBeeblebrox).

Meanwhile, factions like r/theblackvoid sought to remind everyone why destruction is a necessary part of creation. u/theivoryserf shares their thoughts on the matter.

However, not all groups pursued destruction. r/ainbowroad spread around the canvas quickly, working with other factions to create something more:

Data

Reddit is at its best when ideas and insights are being shared and remixed. We deliberately build these projects to be accessible to curious developers.

Redditors like u/mncke captured Place data in realtime and provided it for use by communities like r/placedevs. A popular usage was displaying the placement data in a heatmap that highlighted the most active areas of the Place canvas. u/Lucas7yoshi shared details of a Minecraft server that was tracking these changes in 3D. u/jampekka created an awesome timelapse heatmap of place. u/FLYING_HOOHAW took a similar idea and created a fictitious show’s opening credits:

u/d416 created a series of 3D tilt-shift images from the data. u/Physics_Dude went one step further and printed a topographical heatmap on their 3D printer.

If you’d like to explore the data, you can find the full dataset here.

Aftermath

After 72 hours Place ended but the creativity continued.

u/sudoscript penned the much-shared blog post When Pixels Collide, that retells the story of Place:

… at its core, the story of Place is an eternal story, about the three forces that humanity needs to make art, creation, and technology possible.

u/scharkfin also wrote a memorable comment, reflecting on Place’s short life. Some alliances have even gone as far as to write the history of place from their perspective., as in u/jojo6311’s “Tale of the Great Green Lattice.”

Beyond written histories, redditors have been creating physical objects to remember Place by. u/onji had the best idea ever and u/awkwardatbest made it a reality:

Even now, two weeks after Place has ended, redditors are remembering Place in different ways. The community at r/thefinalclean has erased any ‘errant’ pixels from the final Place canvas. r/placenostalgia is gathering their favorite Place moments. And we’re still waiting for u/bro_just404it to honor their bamboozle-free promise.

And Finally

The depth of projects like Place is only achievable because of the creativity and collaborative nature of the Reddit community. We created a canvas for you to draw anything on and you did not disappoint. From everyone at Reddit HQ, thank you.

Share your favorite moments from Place in the comments.

Place was made possible by the hard work of u/madlee, u/daniel, u/bsimpson, u/spladug, u/gooeyblob, u/eggplanticarus, u/d3fect, u/schwers, u/egonkasper, u/thephilthe, u/chtorrr, u/liltrixxy, u/ocrasorm, u/redtaboo, u/goatfresh and u/sporkicide.

Looking Back at r/Place (2024)

FAQs

What's the deal with R place? ›

r/place was a recurring collaborative project and social experiment hosted on the content aggregator site Reddit. Originally launched on April Fools' Day 2017, it has since been repeated again on April Fools' Day 2022 and on July 20, 2023.

Can I still use R place? ›

Reddit announced the return of r/Place on Wednesday. The company launched previous versions in 2017 and again in 2022. Reddit explained that the 2023 version was originally planned for April, but various setbacks (and the blackout protests) pushed this year's r/Place to launch on Thursday, July 20.

Why is R place closing? ›

Reddit has closed the official forum for its collaborative experiment Place after users filled it with explicit messages directed at the company's management. Reddit Place launched for the third time last month, allowing all users to fill in the pixels of a 1-million-pixel canvas.

How long does r place last? ›

There are two iterations of r/place, both starting on April 1st and ending on April 4th in their respective year. .

Does R place get bigger? ›

Reddit added more space to the r/Place collaborative canvas on Friday, giving users additional room to collaboratively draw pixelated art. Almost immediately after the space was added, users started to write in their protests against the site and CEO Steve Huffman.

How does Rplace work? ›

How r/Place Works. The concept behind r/Place is pretty simple. Reddit provides a giant blank canvas with tiny empty pixels, and any logged-in user can place a tile or pixel of their choice. You have all the liberty to use a pixel or tile of whichever color.

Does anyone still use R? ›

Because it was first designed by statisticians for statistical purposes, R is exceptionally well-suited to data science, an important field in today's world. While R's core function is statistical analysis and graphics, its use extends past these and into AI, machine learning, financial analysis, and more.

Can you use R for free? ›

R is a free, open source statistical software and programming language used for statistical data analysis, based on the older S programming language.

Who is Spez and what did he do? ›

Steve Huffman (born 1983 or 1984), also known by his Reddit username spez (/spɛz/), is an American web developer and entrepreneur.

What is Reddit place your pixel? ›

For those of you who don't know, r/place is a collaborative digital canvas where redditors can place a pixel once every few minutes – and work together to create art on a massive online cooperative canvas.

What is Reddit pixel war? ›

This project is simply a blank canvas on Reddit that users can fill in one pixel at a time on a surface of 4 million pixel squares.

Is R place coming back? ›

The 2023 version of r/Place kicks off on Thursday, July 20th. As you might expect, users are already using the announcement post to air their grievances toward the company.

What is the R-place trend? ›

What is r/Place? In r/Place, users can add a single pixel of color every five minutes on a vast canvas, even overriding others' pixel placements to claim territory. The original idea aimed for a utopian collaborative art piece with various pixelated images forming a giant collage.

How to put a pixel in R place? ›

You will see the current state of the canvas in real-time from your browser and a message at the bottom that says”Place your pixel”. Click on it. At that moment you will see a peephole that accurately transmits the location of the pixel that you will place. If you want to place it elsewhere, simply move the cursor.

What is the US R place? ›

What is r/place? r/place is a subreddit with a globally shared canvas. Each Reddit user can place one pixel on this canvas every 4-10 minutes.

Do you need a Reddit account to use R place? ›

(Note that you can't access r/Place on Old Reddit; you'll need to be on New Reddit or one of the company's mobile apps.) In r/Place, individual users can drop a single pixel of color every five minutes on a huge canvas, including overriding other pixel placements if you want to try and claim some turf.

Who is spez and what did he do? ›

Steve Huffman (born 1983 or 1984), also known by his Reddit username spez (/spɛz/), is an American web developer and entrepreneur.

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