PLACE was an experiment on Reddit that let any user of that site place a single, coloured pixel,
wherever they wanted on a large canvas. They could do this once every 5 minutes, meaning that alone,
a person couldn’t achieve that much, but were they to team up with a large community, then
people could collaborate on images to be proud of. It was a huge success in 2017, and this year,
it returned! But with a few new twists. Spanning April 1st – April 4th,
it started out as the same 1,000x1,000 sized grid as it had been the first time around.
But this time, people knew what to expect, and massive collaborations formed much earlier on
to establish their territory on this canvas. OSU, a resilient piece from the first PLACE,
appeared within minutes and held its own against fierce attacks throughout the experiment. And
the rest of the canvas was quickly dominated by different flags. Ukraine’s colours quickly spanned
the entire thing, Germany’s did similar down near the bottom, and dozens of amongus figures popped
up just below that. A sign of things to come! SpaceX’s logo soon became Space Sex,
then Sexy Sex, and then Sex Sex. And then Nasa. Genshen became GenShit, then Gayshit, then Gen
Shrek, and then, of course, Sex Shrek. The Trans flag came out quickly and then
proceeded to grow, edging its way across England before coming in America. The black void bubbled
in the middle, trying to swallow all in its way, but was soon defeated by many individual logos,
and a rainbow that acted as a barrier between the trans flag and America.
The German flag’s eagle began drinking beer from a poured glass above, growing increasingly muscular,
while France’s wine bottle was gradually depleted, an Eiffel tower appearing behind that.
And Canada’s flag struggled throughout to draw its maple leaf- causing many dank memes to appear
across Reddit. Among them, comparisons with elaborate works elsewhere on PLACE
which appeared with far less difficulty than the simple Maple leaf had done.
Another post memed that the struggling maple leaf was because marijuana had been legalised
in Canada recently. And then Germany showed them up by doing Canada better than Canada could do.
And Star Wars got itself a beautiful poster, which was slowly invaded by sneaky Amongus.
But everywhere you look, there’s a story being told. And an army of people behind it,
maintaining and evolving the image, and drawing penises onto everything they could.
AND THEN, day 2 of the project started, and the canvas DOUBLED in size,
and added some more colour options! This new space was all quickly inhabited,
with existing designs, like Germany’s flag, invading in no time at all.
Belgium capitalised on their similar colours, extending vertically and forming the EU flag
where the two designs intersected. The blue corner became the red corner
became the red boner, before agreeing on purple and then becoming very sus.
The black void got a creepy looking face, which became a pineapple thing then a
face again… before also, becoming very sus. There was a chess board that was… very sus.
Some artworks were revised several times to become increasingly elaborate and beautiful.
The United Kingdom got several landmarks across the bottom of it and then an image
of its isles imprinted over the flag itself. Turkey went from being of its flag, to an
image of its skyline, back to its flag again, and then eventually a more elaborate skyline.
The Fuckcars subreddit grabbed itself quite a large segment, then its name was vandalised
to make several other statements. Across the scene, faces and bodies
were repeatedly sabotaged and this poor dolphin found itself under constant thread from behind.
And this man was sad, no matter how many anime characters he surrounded himself with.
These two puppy pals were happy, until one disappeared and the other started crying.
Suspicions of botting were abundant, the idea being that some parts of the canvas
were being dominated by large numbers of automated, new reddit accounts. A reddit
admin was caught cheating as they placed pixel after pixel down without requiring a cooldown.
Some large twitch streamers tried to coordinate attacks on various areas of the canvas.
Their audiences ripped through large swathes of the board,
and it was down to some of the most resilient artworks to act as the last line of defence
to keep these things from tearing through to the more vulnerable parts of the image.
Elaborate artworks appeared, depicting scenes and pictures.
Meanwhile, Canada was still having trouble with their maple leaf.
Minecraft got itself a loading screen which evolved and updated.
And then, for day 3, the canvas was doubled in size AGAIN, up to a grand 2000x2000 pixels- making
for 4 million dots, all being continually painted by an estimated 6 million accounts.
A new creepy image appeared in the void and evolved multiple times. And France carved out a
massive chunk in the bottom-left corner. This area became one of the most contested parts of PLACE,
especially when this poorly drawn Eiffel tower showed up. It was later home to a twitch raid,
with the attempted image of a woman’s behind being repeatedly censored by
reddit who apparently hadn’t noticed the other leud acts going on everywhere in the canvas.
The French popped up in other places also, with baguettes appearing in all kinds of
appropriate and inappropriate places. Gamestop’s shareprice shot to the moon,
with its green line making its way through and around a number of the other works on the board.
And XP’s desktop bar stretched across the bottom.
The black and purple missing texture image from Half Life 2 cropped up just here.
A Portal from Portal teleported the German flag through several other artworks, and
then got a dog stood half-way through. And PLACE inspired many dank memes and cultural crossovers.
And of course, many, many amongus guys. A QR code leading to a rickroll was even achieved-
albeit temporarily. But that’s the beauty of it. Because, for just a few short, hotly contested
days, PLACE was a living, breathing testament to everything the internet held dear in 2022.
Of all the memes, and memories, the places, and people. All continually appearing and
disappearing, and having to earn their existence against the forces around them!
All this was proof that, despite corrosive elements, the internet CAN work together,
and CAN coordinate, to build something big and beautiful.
And then, at the end of the 4th day, all colours were swapped out for white, and the entire image
quickly ate itself away until it had all returned back to nothing. France had won.