The Reddit pixel canvas entangled tons of internet communities
After a five-year hiatus, the infamous Reddit pixel canvas r/Place was back in action after first debuting back in 2017. Relaunched in 2022 as an April Fools joke, the subreddit r/Place returned and became the largest internet warzone of pixel art that we’ve ever laid eyes on.
In brief, the Reddit pixel canvas r/Place was originally an experimental idea created by Josh Wardle. Does the name sound familiar? Yes, that’s the creator of Wordle, the viral web-based word game that was eventually bought out by New York Times. r/Place allows people all over the world to collaborate on a 10,000 x 10,0000 internet mural filled with pixel art.
Since Reddit pixel canvas r/Place was a free and live canvas, essentially anyone with a Reddit account can access and make edits to it. Users can place one pixel at a time; the only restriction was a 5-minute cooldown for each user before they’re allowed to place another pixel. Let’s not forget to mention that anyone’s pixel can be overlapped or replaced by another user’s implementation.
Obviously, this caused an internet warfare. With the enormous progression of internet culture this past half decade, thousands of online communities gathered to participate and fight over their “territory” as if they were entitled to such a thing in the first place. Artists, Twitch streamers, developers, gamers, subreddits, you name it. Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of users contributed to this temporary artspace.
Over the course of its brief existence, the artwork was changing. Even if certain communities’ drawings don’t make it to the end, the time lapse clips illustrating the canvas’s continual evolution of Reddit pixel canvas r/Place have become a major aspect of this art work, guaranteeing that all contributions play a vital role.
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. The 10,000 × 10,000 pixel canvas was gradually wiped out in what appeared to be an implosion of blank white space. Once again, this collaborative art creation proved to be a brilliant tool to bring internet communities together. It also encompasses everything we dislike about cybercultures and the chaos that can result from them.
