Individually you can create something.
Together you can create something more.
I appreciate when the internet gets playful and creative for April Fools' Day.
Reddit has been doing projects for years that typically are a combination of testing the maximum server burden, demographics, and/or new potential functions for the site.
I've participated in each year since the OrangeRed vs. Periwinkle battle of 2013. Hats hats hats.
I stayed gray for The Button as a part of the waiting Red Guard.
In Robin last year, I helped grow with several huge chats and ended up in the final merged chat before it all crashed. Those of us who lasted to the 17th tier (about 3,000 people) have a private subreddit named after the chat's final merged names /r/ccKufiPrFaSh...
This year was /r/place. Reddit users could place one pixel at a time on a single, shared blank canvas. You would then wait a set period of time to place your next pixel. The time varied, starting at 20 minutes, but eventually dropping to 5.
The result after three days is what you see above. Well, not exactly. There was a huge follow-up effort to clean up stray pixels and restore certain areas that had been swallowed by the Void. But the actual final piece isn't much different from this. There are dozens of articles around the net about how this all went down, so I won't go into that sort of thing here.
The timelapses and heat maps are absolutely brilliant to watch. The most spectacular follow-up is The /r/place Atlas. A detailed, crowd-sourced, map to every little thing on the canvas, complete with thorough explanations.
It's this kind of thing that reminds me how much I love the internet for the incredible cooperation that is possible. /r/place is a manifestation of that in general. There were probably a lot of expectations of it being a vile trainwreck of bigotry and hate symbols. Turned out to be quite the opposite.
It was damned heartwarming.
I just have a few things to say about my individual contribution after the jump.
Once we were locked in it was a matter of diligently repairing wild pixels thrown our way or defending against encroaching neighbors. The Robin was given an eye by many a random passerby. Lol.
I also helped with a bunch of other spots around the canvas. One of the main Discords always had different project groups recruiting anyone who could help build or repair their designs.
Chucked together a compiled image of highlight spots:
My contributions:
- The Robin: Mexico tried to encroach on us many times, but we eventually had a truce. Lots of communication with Radiohead below us as well to figure out our border. I happily helped build out and protect that 'LOVE' design with the hearts to the right of us. That was /r/wholesomememes, which is one of the most delightful subs on reddit.
- Mona Lisa: Huge Discord and great fun to watch it develop over time. I focused on the border and fixing Lisa's eyes from vandalism.
- He-Man laughing: Another big Discord project. Did my best to keep his face clean, but that was a losing battle most of the time. LOL. Someone proposed integrating Skeletor somehow. A quick photoshop was shared with him reversed from what you see in the final. Worried about Lisa encroachment, I whipped up one with Skeletor flipped to make it a mirror-image kinda thing with He-Man. My image was posted as the official "This is what we're doing" plan and more folks jumped in to make a precise template that I think worked out great.
- I have no interest in the band, but a couple dudes asked for help on the small Relient K symbol above He-Man (red, blue, yellow squares)
- The iconic Bowie
- Helped fix Vincent's Starry Night after the Void destroyed it.
- And generally cleaning up pixels anywhere help was needed.
Other noted pieces:
- I loved when the Windows start menu project kicked off right along the bottom of the canvas. All those minimized tabs and stuff. There was a ton of conflict down there as previous stuff was covered, but I think it turned out cool.
- The Harry Potter Hogwarts crest was a very early piece, done mostly by one woman I think? Initially anyway. Folks mostly respected it all the way through. Great design for how modestly sized it is.
- Star Trek Enterprise D and Bob Ross. A couple spots that put a huge smile on my face as I scrolled around the canvas.
- Prequel Memes (top right): Another early design that was a mess at first, but then got refined into this beautiful block of text. Great way to poke fun at the Star Wars prequels with the tragedy of Darth Plaguis. Did you ever hear it? XD
- Kpop (bottom left) built a little section group by group. I helped with only a couple of fixing pixels. I was just happy to see it represented.
- DFTBA!: Also happy to see a little touch of Nerdfighteria in there.
- The Transgender flag (top left-ish) spanned the full-width of the canvas, which honestly made me cry a bit. Pretty lovely. And I was pleased to see the reddit asexual community get their flag in there (among others). They/we don't get much representation. Not that we need much.
- Rainbow Road: A massive effort that created a lot of the early structure to the canvas and developed all kinds of creative ways to bounce around different areas while avoiding or incorporating with other designs. I think it also helped to set that positive attitude going forward and throughout the 72 hours.
You go, RR!
There was something about the positive cooperation, nostalgic culture, and wonderful result which genuinely provided feel-good vibes despite the rough things that are happening politically and around the world right now.
Not such a terrible thing to throw yourself into a uselessly silly, but hopeful and positive cooperative project with a million fellow humans.
Individually you can create something.
Together you can create something more.
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