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Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

arstechnica.com

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Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#51

Post by the_watcher »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #9
rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> I think the one thing this really showed was most people on reddit don't really care about politics, but the vocal minority on there makes it seem like it's the forefront of every issue. Isn't it also possible for the reverse to be true? That a very vocal minority cared very much about r/place, and that vocal minority happened to not care enough about politics to show up on Place?

It seems that given the restrictions on how often a single user could actually visibly change the image, coupled with the sheer volume of changes, no, the reverse is almost certainly not true.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#52

Post by thesagan »

baby wrote: post #11
rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we need to defend this!" that's awesome! The whole thing became a territory war :)

I, too, thought that was a big part of the fun! I liked the competition of it all. I'm a bit surprised to learn this wasn't a popular sentiment.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#53

Post by theseatoms »

darkstar999 wrote: post #31
Fizzer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does your link say that swastikas are not allowed? Does a swastika "encourage or incite violence"? I'm curious since I don't ban swastikas on my site, although some of my users ask me to.

It's more about reddit being able to sell ads than anything else. I'd say it falls under: > Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so

Interesting that they allow the hammer and sickle.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#54

Post by rmccoy6435 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #9
rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> I think the one thing this really showed was most people on reddit don't really care about politics, but the vocal minority on there makes it seem like it's the forefront of every issue. Isn't it also possible for the reverse to be true? That a very vocal minority cared very much about r/place, and that vocal minority happened to not care enough about politics to show up on Place?

That's actually a really interesting thought. I hadn't even considered that.

I don't currently have the time to find all of the analytics about pixel placement, but I would assume there were tens of thousands of users who aligned with some 'faction' and had more than 20 pixel placements in the entire 72 hours (I would say that is a large enough number to identify people who actively participated), which is by no means a minority of individuals who frequent reddit. Most of the subreddits I visit all had some plans to organize something on there, so there was a very diverse crowd that organized around it.

I draw my conclusion about politics based on the fact that it wouldn't have been very hard to get one of the larger political subreddits to get something on the board and maintain it for the weekend, yet that didn't happen.

I have filtered all political subreddits via RES, and it's surprising how little politics is discussed on reddit once you remove the epicenters.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#55

Post by Navarr »

eatitraw wrote: post #49
rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> I don't think there is anything actually political on the final /r/place piece other than country flags. There are various flags of different anarchist movements, very long trans* flag, LGBT flags here and there. IMO, all these count as "actually political".

Anarchist movements I can see, but I don't think trans/LGBT flags count as "political."

It's an identity, not a political statement. It'd be like calling christian crosses "political"

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#56

Post by the_watcher »

baby wrote: post #13
beefhash wrote: post #5

It's worth nothing that the admins did actively ban users trying to make swastikas. /b/ tried and found that out the hard way. Reddit's content policy[1] was still applicable and was very much enforced. [1] https://www.reddit.com/help/contentpolicy/

When are we going to see this beautiful sign back in our culture as a positive symbol :( that and the Hitler mustache. I'm guessing we need a few hundred years before we can use these things without it being associated to Nazism.

To be fair, Michael Jordan spent a few years trying to rehabilitate the Hitler mustache in his Hanes ads. The problem is that Hitler's become so associated with it that it's now broadly known as the Hitler mustache (as opposed to the toothbrush mustache - thanks DanBC!), which makes it pretty hard to dissociate it with the man for most people.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#57

Post by rmccoy6435 »

eatitraw wrote: post #49
rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> I don't think there is anything actually political on the final /r/place piece other than country flags. There are various flags of different anarchist movements, very long trans* flag, LGBT flags here and there. IMO, all these count as "actually political".

I think that's an interesting conversation to have. I didn't know there were anarchist flags on there, could you link me to some of them, I'm curious to see.

As for the LGBT flags, I don't view those as political but rather as communities within reddit that together make up a large userbase who were committed to protecting each other's art and flags.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#58

Post by Ajedi32 »

Here's a timelapse of the entire event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnRCZK3KjUY

I found this whole thing to be incredibly fascinating. It's pretty amazing to see how everyone just sort of spontaneously banded together to create little works of art on the board which they could never have made on their own. Everytime I watch the timelapse I notice something new.

It's also interesting to note that because the impact of any individual user on the board was pretty limited (you could only place one pixel every 5 minutes, and even then there was no guarantee the first pixel you placed wouldn't be overwritten by someone else before you were even allowed to place another), every significant piece of artwork on there had tens or even hundreds of people involved in creating and maintaining it.

In addition to the various artworks on the board, there were also several major factions scattered throughout the board with their own goals. /r/TheBlueCorner dedicated themselves to filling the empty space in the bottom right corner of the board with blue pixels, while /r/theblackvoid formed to erase various artworks by replacing them with black tiles. If you pay attention you may also notice several other factions in the timelapse (the Rainbow Road, Draw Hearts, Erase the Place, and The Green Lattice were a few other notable ones).

Other interesting events to note include [the German invasion of France](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ParHJmq2aCs) (and resulting peaceful resolution), [The Void's (unsuccessful) attack on the OSU logo](https://i.imgur.com/Tpmvrcc.gif), and [several factions ganging up to attack the US flag](https://gfycat.com/InfamousShyEeve) while most of the US population was asleep. There's plenty of other stuff you might notice too if you look hard enough. (For example, can you find Waldo?)

[Here's what the canvas looked like when the event finally ended](https://i.imgur.com/ajWiAYi.png). Other interesting stuff to note include [this animated heatmap](https://i.imgur.com/a95XXDz.gifv) by /u/jampekka of activity on the canvas, and [this graphic](https://i.imgur.com/SEHaUSJ.png) by /u/alternateme highlighting all the white pixels which never got touched throughout the experiment.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#59

Post by CarVac »

rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

There was another fascinating aspect of politics that sprang up due to Place: inter-community politics.

My community (Madoka Magica) was continuously communicating with our neighbors on all sides, ranging from the gigantic PrequelMemes to our right, Canada to our south, Homestuck, the Greek and Turkish flags mentioned in the article (which really were warring for quite a time before the heart appeared), and even tiny little subreddits like the AEIROU who we had to relocate as part of negotiations for our expansion.

There was constant debate about where to expand, who to defend against, who was being a jerk and needed to be wiped out... it was like a game of Diplomacy more than anything else.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#60

Post by rmccoy6435 »

Yen wrote: post #45
rmccoy6435 wrote: post #6

I think this was a pretty neat experiment. For the first 24 hours everything was chaos, then it settled down in the middle as communities formed, then at the end it was just annoying as every subreddit was trying to take over real-estate, and far too many people were taking it way too seriously. It got annoying going to certain subreddits that I subscribe to for content started getting flooded with "Man the decks, we…

> The other thing this author tried to make this about was politics. I think there is something to be said about politics, here, but it's not about specific countries, ideologies, or personalities - it's about the nature of how we do politics. In order for anything interesting of scale to get created, it required multiple users cooperating. In some cases, this means convincing them to abandon the project they want th…

I started to think about this a bit while I was replying to pavel_lishin below. Maybe it was more of users caring more about other communities or images more so than they do about political causes.

I must agree the scale of some of the works on there and the coordination it took is very admirable. I loved checking in every few hours just to see what had changed and who was fighting for control. It was definitely fun for a while to follow, but after time it became like a cult with some really toxic side-effects that leaked into different subreddits and detracted from the actual content fit for that sub.

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