place

2022-04-03

for two years, 2017 and 2022, reddit has made r/place their april fool's joke. the idea of a collaborative pixel canvas has been copied on countless websites, but place is the biggest one.

i'd been using reddit without an account since late 2016, lurking osugame daily. i had an osu account from early 2016 because 2 fellow tween coders mentioned it, but i didn't touch it for months. then the osu world cup of 2016 happened, and i enjoyed talking to one of those teens about it, both of us hyped about the tournament. later, they introduced me to kagerou project, ted chiang's arrival/stories of your life and others, and kazuo ishiguro's the remains of the day. that person was really cool.

i started playing osu, with skill progressions of: a week (good at 2 star) - a month (good at 3 star) - a lot of months (4 star) - a lot of months (5 star) - a lot of months (6 star) - quit w. i was probably at the 4 star point during r/place.

when i was place was up, and osugame was making their circle, i was excited. i could contribute to that! i just had to make a reddit accoun- accounts no younger than march 31, 2017 could place pixels. welp. i just watched the canvas progress on the sidelines during the whole event, watching osu players try to coordinate the art, posting grids and discord server links. the main other parts i remember were rainbow road, which i thought of as a pretty superhighway, the blue corner, and how fun everyone thought it was - but still inferior to the button. looking at the actual canvas, i recall much more.

for the next 4 years, i didn't really care for the april fool's jokes. i didn't have the official app to play with them at my convenience, and got bored of the lackluster homepage i saw everyday, fully stopping my reddit usage in 2020. except to occasionally look for product reviews. i wasn't interested in the reopening of place this april 1st either. but so many people everywhere were enjoying place that i felt i had to contribute. but there was nothing i was interested in supporting. i had quit osu for years, and nothing else on the canvas was something i was cared about. so i spent yesterday maintaining the dark void. but today, i saw that unsurpassablez was streaming an attempt to recover his humble spot from a successful invader, and hopped out of bed to support the cause.

it was satisfying to see collective action from a small but sizable group of people, and support of the alliances that came with it. there were 3 massive replacements of dark blue to light blue, which all happened within a minute of the commands. on the first command, i didn't think so many people would actually place down pixels together, thinking back to ninja-floss-style patheticism. but we did, again and again. displays of power and our recovery of destroyed neighbors' art.

i then helped a record label mark a 8x9px spot for their logo on the new ground that got added, which took an hour to do with 7 people. a small space next to ours slowly populated with pixels by one person. and then we all got destroyed by a huge roblox character, who annihilated countless other tiny/"indie" art pieces. it had the force of about 5000 people, but i have no idea who led it.

...remembered why i wrote this post in the first place. this year's place just allows anyone, even if their account was made after april fool's, to place pixels. yeah, their placement delay is longer, but still managable. it's a weird message to the people back in 2017 who couldn't, and also weird in that only people who missed out in 2017 would even register this change. i still enjoy place but i was forced to miss out back then and no one is forced to miss out now.

listening to:

twinkle park - connections and feelings (2014-2022) minus commentary tracks, chronologically

first track: cheap booze, alone or with friends

last track: the turn of the world of the sweethearts

then, queued:

twinkle park - don't come around here no more (please), twinkle park - no words, twinkle park - cosmo's house, twinkle park - apple soda

then,

twinkle park - unhirable california

update 2022-07-11 renamed