Although you can no longer place blocks on Reddit’s r/Place screen, which was a revival of an April Fools’ Day experiment, the platform gave us the opportunity to relive the experience. The company provided a treasure trove of data, including a summary post which goes through numbers and stats (things like which country placed the most tokens, or which subs talked the most about r/Place), along with a full CSV dataset for people to move if they want.
But, as someone who watched the chaos unfold by checking in every hour or so (and putting up a few pieces of mine), the best Reddit has posted is a three minute time lapse showing how users shaped the canvas over four days.
Watching it evolve is like looking into the heart of Reddit. You might see communities fighting to get hold of the mosaics or collaborating to make their own works of art, which included everything from a Among us crewmate of a giant trans pride flag. And, you know, a terrifying face peering out of a void (which appears several times, of course).
The GIF finally ends with a burst of white, not because everyone has banded together to clear the board like an Etch A Sketch, but because Reddit made it so users could just put white tiles at the end. Fortunately, everyone’s mosaic work isn’t gone forever. If you go to ar/Place now, there is a screen interactive version where you can go through the full 80+ hour experience and zoom in as much as you want.
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“Introvert. Problem solver. Total fan of pop culture. Independent student. Creator”.
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