R-Slash-Place, or Our Place,
was a Reddit social experiment
taking place April 1st of 2017.
It consisted of a 1,000 by 1,000 grid of pixels.
Any Reddit user could draw on this canvas,
but there was a catch.
Only one pixel could be drawn every five or so minutes.
Anyone could draw over your pixels at any time,
so if you wanted to create something
you had better also been prepared to defend it.
This resulted in countless communities coming together
to leave their mark on this historic canvas of the internet.
Battles for territory,
faction delegates partaking in world congress,
civil wars,
and many other political elements became regular
during the couple days r/Place existed.
Some factions were highly organized.
"Five, four-"
"Refilling!"
"...Two, one,"
"Go!"
Some factions were not-so-organized.
Today we’ll be focusing on, what else,
the Brony Faction.
The brony faction consisted primarily of r/MyLittlePony subscribers.
Their means of communication was spread across
multiple subreddits and Discord servers.
Much of the leadership and soldiers
made their home on the Manechat Discord server,
where a preexisting ‘games and activities’ channel
was repurposed for r/Place discussion.
This is r/Place in the earliest recorded hours.
When the canvas first went public
it quickly became a free-for-all of
rapidly expanding lines and blocky text
as people frantically clicked to leave their mark.
But it didn't take long for organization to appear.
The Brony Faction first got involved with
the creation of a Pinkie Pie near the lower right hand corner.
Unfortunately,
it was this placement which would lead to Pinkie’s demise
as the Blue Corner was one of r/Place’s earliest factions
and it spread rapidly.
Eventually, Blue Corner consumed our poor pink pony.
Could that be the end for ponies on the canvas?
Would every attempt to ponify it end in failure?
Far from it.
In fact, some time before Pinkie’s demise
a new project was already underway to the north.
The beginnings of Dashie were being created.
Perhaps it's because this particular design
didn’t look too much like a pony at first,
or maybe it was just good luck,
but one way or another Dashie was soon completed.
To further memorialize their efforts
the brony faction began work on a black border
to help Dashie stand out.
It was around this time that recruitment reached an all-time high
and the brony efforts became more organized.
There was hope amongst the bronies that maybe,
just maybe,
we could indeed leave our mark on the canvas.
But alas,
an evil force could be heard growling in the distance.
Most factions were happy to work together
in the interest of self-preservation and the bond of alliance,
but there was one group that had no interest in making friends.
The Void.
The Void had one goal,
and that was to continuously cleanse the canvas
and replace it with empty blackness.
Some tried to defend the efforts of The Void
as a necessary evil to purge the weak
and create room for other factions
but anyone trying to protect creations of their own
quickly lost faith in that thinking.
They were well-organized
and easily outnumbered most other factions.
Dashie was an extremely vulnerable target.
Some enemy factions may target her just to send a message to bronies,
but worst of all is her black border.
When The Void begins a campaign of destruction
they start by picking a Core location.
Their Core becomes a starting point
for their black tendrils to spread from.
Once their forces had systematically queued up their available pixels,
The Void would strike with a massive attack.
It was a devastating tactic.
Countless factions and works of art
were forever lost to The Void.
Dashie’s black border was the problem.
It was already larger than most of The Void’s previous Cores.
Although Dashie was viewed as an easy target to some,
she was far from undefended.
The defenders of Dashie had a few tricks up their sleeve.
For one, we were one of many factions to employ bots.
Bots were usually Python scripts
that performed clicks on behalf of a user.
Bots still had to follow all of the same rules
and didn’t have any distinct advantages aside from running overnight,
so they weren’t exactly discouraged.
On the whole,
Dashie probably had about 50 bots protecting her at the peak
in addition to the human soldiers.
It’s not at all a stretch to assume Dashie had far more humans than bots
despite her enemies thinking the opposite.
Even so,
those numbers paled in comparison to the larger factions
especially the numbers The Void could boast at any given time.
Some factions, including The Void,
used paid-for bots to expand their territory.
There was another unexpected challenge to overcome however.
Dashie had undergone multiple small changes over the course of her life
including the border,
the addition of text,
cutie marks,
and a few pixel-perfect improvements.
Soldiers using old templates found themselves at war with newer updates.
This meant we had to not only defend against
random vandalism and foreign invaders,
but also our own outdated bots.
The primary maintainer of the brony bots worked hard
to produce the scripts, templates,
and automatically updating web server
needed to keep the bots from destroying each other.
Many helped out,
but a leading individual was Hithroc.
While the brony faction had no formal leader
he easily qualifies as this history lesson’s most notable figure.
Dashie’s secret weapon was actually the text above her.
"They had a really uncoordinated attack trying to change 'ponies'"
"Were as if they had all said 'everyone attack the pony'"
"They would have easily destroyed it."
Most acts of random vandalism were attempts to change the text
as evident in this heatmap.
This meant unorganized vandalism was not a major threat.
Virtually every bordering faction was either indifferent or allied with Dashie.
Among the most active were
Halo, Parahumans, Sans, and Tiny TARDIS.
All of these factions had regular back-and-forth
with both sides occasionally sending representatives
to call for assistance or to communicate plans.
There was a period of time were war almost broke out with Halo
when it was proposed to expand Master Chief into our territory,
but this was also around the time an alliance was being formed
so the invasion never formally took place.
The Brony Faction took part in a small-scale civil war
when Halo’s text was changed into “Fix MCC”
referring to the Master Chief Collection
which a lot of Halo fans were unhappy about.
Tiny TARDIS was a close ally most of the time,
but there was one incident worth mentioning.
They were partially damaged by the addition of a blue shield
and later invaded by Portugal’s color.
At this time,
The Brony Faction decided to use this as an opportunity to expand.
We started adding a Sunset Shimmer cutie mark
but it wasn’t long before Tiny TARDIS sent a representative
to explain that they hadn’t given up on the territory yet.
The bronies had to choose
between declaring war on the Doctor Who Fandom,
or giving up our expansion plans
in favor of assisting Tiny TARDIS.
It didn’t take long to settle on the latter
and Tiny TARDIS was quickly restored.
Ultimately, the bronies remained a friendly faction
with many unspoken and formal alliances.
At one point there was a small-scale enemy campaign
to falsely implicate the Brony Faction
in an invasion of our neighbors,
but this scheme never came to fruition.
Around mid-way through the event brony spirits were high.
We had claimed a reasonably large area,
proved our defenses as a force to be reckoned with,
and were on good terms with all but the most unfriendly factions.
Dedicated soldiers spent hours diplomatizing
and managing our pixel resources to defend Dashie.
Some skipped meals and obligations
with the hope we could keep Dashie’s presence strong
to the very end.
This was an inspiration to the brony community
and an engaging activity which brought people together.
But there was a growing concern on everyone’s minds:
how long could we hold out?
Every participant of r/Place was keen to know
when the final hours of the event would be.
Having this information would be the ultimate weapon
allowing for a “final push,”
whether intending to attack or defend.
When asked about the event’s end
one moderator replied with this ASCII image of a rabbit
heavily implying Easter to be the final day of r/Place.
This news came as a shock to many
but especially the Brony Faction.
Easter was weeks away,
and although Dashie held strong thus far
it would only take one coordinated attack from The Void
to put all of our efforts to an end.
The news spread late at night during the second day.
Some soldiers decided to dig-in
and protect Dashie to the very end.
others accepted the fact
that there was no way we could hold out for that long.
Many of the brony soldiers went to bed that night
unsure if Dashie would still be there in the morning.
To the surprise of many
the event ended early on the third day,
not Easter as previously rumored.
It was a bittersweet ending,
because although it was sad to see the event come to a close
it was also a relief for the Brony Faction
to know our little Dashie had not only survived,
but thrived during the great pixel war.
The final image contains only four pixels of vandalism
which easily fade away when viewing the canvas as a whole.
Not only did we succeed in protecting Dashie
for almost the entire duration,
but this was an activity which brought people together and inspired.
From the early demise of Pinkie Pie,
to the longstanding defense of Dashie,
to another pony presence entirely
in the form of the BerryTube logo,
bronies have left their mark on internet history yet again.
This video followed the history of ponies in r/Place
but as you can imagine there were thousands of groups involved.
I highly recommend you check out more information about the event as a whole.
There’s a link in the description
to a super cool webpage that serves as an atlas of the whole thing.
Did you like this video?
Were you one of the soldiers during r/Place?
In any event,
I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
As always
be sure to check out my other videos,
subscribe for more,
and thank you so much for watching!
Goodbye!
[On screen: Rumors of one of The Void admins being a brony.]