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Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

arstechnica.com

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Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#211

Post by pkamb »

skizm wrote: post #97
CarVac wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still cannot believe how large and clean that /r/PrequelMemes logo came out. It was a lot of text too, which made it all the more impressive.

I don't understand why that was what a group of people put serious time and thought into creating.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#212

Post by mmanfrin »

My favorite moment of the experiment was when a German flag began to overtake a French flag, and as fighting was taking place over the former-French flag, France went upwards and made a flag, and once that was complete the fighting over their former space started to morph in to an EU flag, and the intersection of France and Germany became the EU.

I think also briefly Italy had the south side and Spain had the East, but those went back to France/Germany respectively.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#213

Post by InitialLastName »

cyphar wrote: post #48
darkstar999 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While some users might feel that way, I'm not sure how an image (which is a collection of pixels on a screen that has many different historical interpretations) would threaten, harass or bully someone. Or incite it. Of course, these days ad networks are hyper-sensitive about this topic, so from an advertising perspective it does make sense.

Re-worded: While some users might feel that way, I'm not sure how a slogan (which is a collection of pixels on a screen that has many different historical interpretations) would threaten, harass, or bully someone.

We have to accept that the things we do online can have real-world repercussions, even if they're just pixels on a screen.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#214

Post by joenot443 »

xanderstrike wrote: post #119
ctdonath wrote: post #104

Someone's gotta mention http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com : Early in the history of the Internet, some high school kid set up a web page with a 1000x1000 image and a limited color palette. He sold individual pixels, plus a link from that pixel to anywhere, for $1. Yup, he sold them all in fairly short order.

The sad thing is none of those logos and links have any meaning any more, almost all of them go to 404s, domain parked pages, or completely unrelated sites, and even when they were new they went to scummy ecommerce or porn sites. In 12 years, the imagery on /r/place will still hold meaning and the timelapses will still tell a pretty cool story.

Pretty wild to see a (relatively) huge company like 2checkout (https://www.2checkout.com/) on there.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#215

Post by rtx »

soundwave106 wrote: post #161
najati83 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A swastika, an LGBT flag and a hammer and a sickle are all political symbols. I found it funny admins only banned one of them.

Of the three, the swastika internationally is the most problematic symbol as far as international law goes. It is banned outright except for narrow historical exceptions in several Western countries (eg France and Germany). Other countries may not have banned the symbol per se, but they may have "hate speech" type laws, and a swastikas used for this purpose may also fall afoul of that. The hammer and sickle is more c…

A billion Hindus would disagree with you.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#216

Post by namlem »

lacampbell wrote: post #188
Grue3 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how hammer and sickle, a symbol used by multiple governments to oppress and murder millions of people, is in any way more appropriate than any far right symbol.

I too am always baffled about how much more accepted communist imagery is than Nazi imagery. Mao and Stalins death counts far outstrip Hitlers. Also anyone advocating nazism in public would be rightly shouted down but you get heavily upvoted posts here advocating all sorts of nonsense proven to kill millions.

Communist death tolls are mostly due to economic mismanagement, whereas the Nazis were intentionally exterminating people. Obviously many people were killed in the gulags, but that number is far smaller than the numbers killed in Nazi death camps or in the famines which resulted from the aforementioned mismanagement.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#217

Post by lovemenot »

Wow, this is just fascinating. I don't really know Reddit, so this is the first time I heard of r/place. It reminds me of a couple of earlier experiments in emergent social organisation. Loren Carpenter's 1991 Pong, which is documented in Kevin Kelley's book Out of Control[1]. Also, DARPA's 2009 Network Challenge[2] (weather balloons)

[1] http://kk.org/mt-files/books-mt/ooc-mf.pdf (page 11)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge

If Reddit releases the pixel placement timings and researchers can go back over the boards to investigate communication about r/place, I believe this should be a very rich trove of data for sociologists.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#218

Post by dccoolgai »

pkamb wrote: post #211
skizm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still cannot believe how large and clean that /r/PrequelMemes logo came out. It was a lot of text too, which made it all the more impressive.

I don't understand why that was what a group of people put serious time and thought into creating.

Bless you. Don't ever go to reddit.com

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#219

Post by skizm »

pkamb wrote: post #211
skizm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still cannot believe how large and clean that /r/PrequelMemes logo came out. It was a lot of text too, which made it all the more impressive.

I don't understand why that was what a group of people put serious time and thought into creating.

I thought about that also. My conclusion: 1) Not political (or really controversial at all), 2) Meme is newish so not over done yet, 3) who doesn't like star wars? 4) Everyone on the sub knew right away what they wanted to post, so there was no lag time between designing a "logo" and rallying the troops.

I'm still impressed all things considered.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#220

Post by sooheon »

hueving wrote: post #164
sooheon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having (or lacking) a sexual orientation or identity is not politics, it just is . But expressing it, identifying with others who share it, forming groups and alliances and a shared sense of community is precisely what politics is. I think we pretty much agree.

No, it only becomes political when it comes to forcing other groups to change or support your cause. My meetup dedicated to showing off old hardware is not political. If I tried to force a tax on everyone through a referendum to support my group, then I've made it political.

> My meetup dedicated to showing off old hardware is not political.

Can you be absolutely sure? How do you decide who shows and tells today? Who is the meetup "leader", and how did they get that position? What do you do about that old software meetup that always meets across the hall from you at the same time and steals your donuts and coffee? Almost anything groups of people do entails politics, without necessarily even going to the obvious case of forcible taxes.

Besides we were talking about staking out pixels on a limited canvas, which is a zero sum game, involves other groups and the need to consolidate efforts, a decidedly political affair.

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