Reddit’s r/Place is a subreddit and social experiment launched on April 1st, 2017. Five years later, it came back in 2022. Reddit’s initial vague instructions were as, “There is an empty canvas. You may place a tile upon it, but you must wait to place another. Individually you can create something. Together you can create something more.” (Reddit). From the same creator as wordle, this social experiment essentially gave all users an empty white, 1000 x 1000 tile canvas, allowing each individual to place one coloured pixel every 5 minutes.
Although Reddit did not explicitly state the purpose of this experiment, due to the fact that users could only place a tile every 5 minutes, users found themselves working together in coordinated communities to produce their own pixel art (Lorenz, 2022).
From lecture we know conceptually that communities look like a group of nodes with many connections inside and few connections to the rest of the network. Well many of these subreddit communities began heavy interaction through conflict, negotiation, persuasion and coordination in an effort to claim virtual territory on the canvas (Litherland and Mørch, 2021). In particular, twitch streamers had heavy influence over the pixels created on the canvas. One of the biggest Spanish streamers, named El Rubius, called upon the BTS fandom for an alliance (Childs, 2022). In exchange for help fighting against French bots taking up their virtual space on the canvas, he would stream the next BTS single to tens of thousands of his viewers.
This creation of alliance or ‘friends’ is reminiscent of signed networks forming, which has balance. Essentially there are 3 coalitions, the Spanish, BTS and French communities, where the Spanish and BTS groups are both ‘friends’, but are ‘enemies’ to the French. This forming of alliances was not unique to this influencer, there were many sub communities doing the same, in order to protect their own art on the canvas.
Over the course of 72hours, the social experiment concluded with the final r/place, 1000 x 1000 canvas filled with works of art from large and small communities all over the internet. Although there is limited research and study that has gone into r/place as a social experiment, Litherland and Mørch propose that if researchers could vary conditions such as the “5-minute rule” or the size of the canvas, that they could study design activity, learning behavior, and social organization in mass collaboration efforts (Litherland and Mørch, 2021). Below is the final image of the canvas.
Sources:
Childs, A. (2022, August 4). How R/place – a massive and chaotic collaborative art project on reddit – showcased the best and worst of online spaces. The Conversation. Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://theconversation.com/how-r-place-a-massive-and-chaotic-collaborative-art-project-on-reddit-showcased-the-best-and-worst-of-online-spaces-180662
Litherland, K. T., & Mørch, A. I. (2021, April 28). Instruction vs. emergence on R/place: Understanding the growth and control of evolving artifacts in mass collaboration. Computers in Human Behavior. Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563221001680#!
Lorenz, T. (2022, April 4). Internet communities are battling over pixels. The Washington Post. Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/04/reddit-place-internet-communities/
R/place – full screenshot of R/place 2022. reddit. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://www.reddit.com/r/place/comments/twft1q/full_screenshot_of_rplace_2022/
Reddit. (n.d.). R/announcements – place. reddit. Retrieved October 21, 2022, from https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/62mesr/place/