In an online era of marketing stunts, April Fools’ Day has become one of the worst days on the internet. In an attempt to change that, Reddit brought back a nostalgic experience for April Fools Day 2022. From Saturday 2nd of April at 12am AEDT, Reddit brought back the highly requested, r/place, a communal 1000×1000 pixel (and growing) canvas that was one of Reddit’s most popular April Fools’ Day experiences. The project was a beautiful result of online collaboration and what online communities are all about.
When the site first ran r/place in 2017, more than one million redditors placed approximately 16 million tiles on a blank communal digital canvas – resulting in a collective digital art piece.
In 2022, the site was even more popular – so much in fact, that the canvas was expanded twice.
From Rembrandt replicas and BTS creations to iconic French monuments and streamer wars, r/place’s showcased how communities, nations, and fandoms can gather together to create, cooperate, alter, and meme on the world’s largest collaborative online digital canvas. The subreddit became one of the top visited subreddits in Reddit’s history. The final artwork saw over 160+ million tiles placed by over 10.4+ million redditors.
Australians did not miss out on the fun with Aussie users being part of the top 10 most active countries and territories out of the 236 that participated, leaving fellow Redditor’s impressed with Australia’s subtle but very well done involvement with a Kangaroo and Koala, can of Victoria Bitter and a jar of Vegemite – as well as other Australian colloquialisms that can’t be written here – shining with pride.
The Australians also worked hard with its New Zealand allies to protect their share of the canvas.
A complete timelapse of r/plase can be found here.
An atlas of r/place, which describes each and every artwork and meme can be found here.