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Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

arstechnica.com

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Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#141

Post by mhermher »

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…

On the politics point, I really think it was for a different reason.

Probability of putting up an image on r/place was a function (inversely related to) of how much antagonism it would draw. I think that it why there were so few political messages. There were too many people AGAINST a given image, and not necessarily not enough FOR it.

Sabotaging was way easier than constructing.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#142

Post by ourcat »

Are there any open-source projects out there which can do this?

The resulting 10 minute time-lapse video is an absolute thing of beauty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCAsY8kjE3w

I once ran a site years ago where people could doodle these little squares. It didn't take long for 'wars' to break out, involving various insignia. And cartoon genitals.

It got to about 500k before something went horribly wrong with a hard disk on the server. :(

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#143

Post by mikeash »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #72
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…

/r/wales and /faroeislands had a mutual defense pact, enabling both (small in terms of Reddit) communities to punch above their weight. It was great fun, fighting off trolls and attempts by other subreddits to aquire further real estate for themselves. /u/SCtester cleaned up the final image to fix up (ed: some of) the in-progress and rogue pixels and damage by the "void" group. http://i.imgur.com/7E3bAnE.png There ar…

Reading through the conversation on this stuff, I'm wondering if this weird combination of amusement and befuddlement is how my parents felt when I was telling them about my online activities back in the early 90s.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#144

Post by russdpale »

make3 wrote: post #131
the_watcher wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

a black person with a Hitler moustache is not remotely nearly as bad. they really don't look like Hitler, and it's very unlikely they are secretly hoping for the supremacy of the Aryan race

Lots of people notices the commercial and when he would sport it around Charlotte. ESPN even mentioned it, and IIRC he cut it because of the negative attention it was getting. I could be wrong about the last point.

With that said, when I saw it on an NBA game before the commercials aired I was like 'Hey! Look! Jordan has a Hitler stache, wth?' To which my friend responded 'he needs a new PR person'

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#145

Post by cookiecaper »

spike021 wrote: post #88
cyphar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't want to assume you lack a connection to swastikas used as they were during the Holocaust. For me personally, my grandfather and his family were persecuted along with other family members and friends. My grandfather was even beaten by Hitler Youth, among experiencing other horrible events (Kristallnacht in particular). I wish it weren't the case but the symbol is strongly associated with the feelings from this…

My grandparents lived in Europe during World War II and were also negatively affected by the Nazis.

While it's normal to find display of Nazi symbology distasteful, considering it bullying or taking personal offense is really not reasonable, unless it's done as an attempt to embarrass/mock you, personally.

Bullying is absolutely the wrong word for people who are going about their business without specific negative intent.

Like others, I hope that the swastika loses its strong association with Nazism. That's not going to happen if we continue to freak out and cry about our hurt feelings every time one is displayed.

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#146

Post by nebabyte »

scrollaway wrote: post #14

Reddit's AF this year was excellent, probably my favourite AF experiment of all time. I usually really dislike AF on the internet - some (most) sites become completely unusable for a day and, last thing the internet needs, it gets even harder to tell real news from the fake bits. (Did you know Takei is running for 2018 congress? That was true! Actually it wasn't. But it was! Well, no, it wasn't.) But I'm really fond…

> But I'm really fond of how Reddit always handled it: A day for creativity and experimentation

Someone didn't sit through the TF2 one or iirc their other one (before? after?) it

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#147

Post by koyote »

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.

Lings Cars is still doing fine! http://www.lingscars.com/

Re: Reddit’s April Fools’ experiment

#149

Post by sooheon »

spike021 wrote: post #139
sooheon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not bullying, it is you taking offense to pixels. Which you are perfectly free to do, but nobody is bullying you by putting their art online.

That's why I separated the kind of bullying it is. Maybe I didn't explain my thought-process very well, but the idea is it may have not been directed specifically to bully, but by making statements, like "you're taking offense to pixels", there is an unintentional/passive form of bullying going on. It gives off the feeling of "well not everybody feels this way so it's just you and you shouldn't really be feeling this…

Somebody who does not even know you exist, puts up a drawing which they have no idea whether you will see or not, for their own purposes which you have no way of knowing, and you happen to come across it and feel bad. I think it's not fair to the word "bullying" to use it in this context.

There's a point where the word is no longer appropriate--I think "passive" bullying is an oxymoron. A bully is someone who targets someone else, and makes that person feel bad by repeatedly abusing them verbally and physically. This is a very bad thing, which is why the word is powerful, but it's very different from words like "offensive", which is more in line with what you mean. You are made uncomfortable by it, the poster likely has no intention whatsoever toward you.

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