Place Was The Internet, In All Its Glory

Place is finished. Place is over.

But the final version of Place still stands and it’s a monument to the internet run wild. Incredibly, it’s also testament to the internet’s ability to collaborate.

What was Place? Place was a blank slate, a sub-reddit that allowed users to place one single coloured pixel on a canvas, before being timed out. It was a social experiment of sorts — what would people create and build as a collective?

Place spun out of control, or into control. Eventually dozens of other sub-reddits got involved, coordinating efforts to get different logos or flags or images onto Place. There were territory battles, massive movements, deliberate sabotage events.

Place was incredible.

There was the infamous Blue Corner, which eventually got its own sub-reddit. That started out as a sprawling section of the bottom left hand corner of place, but was eventually reduced to a smaller spot and people battled it out for space.

There was the Australian section of the map, dutifully kept safe by the netizens of r/straya

Absolutely beautiful.

Here is the final version of Place:

This is what place will look like forever.

And here’s the final version of the Australian section:

Please note the addition of “Crikey” to the Steve Irwin memorial. Good work Straya.

For posterity, this is a time-lapse of the whole thing coming together from its inception till the final moments. This is incredible to watch. This is a timelapse of the full 72 hours of Place’s life.

This is also an absolute must watch: a video that dramatises all the big moments that occurred during the Place experiment.

Perhaps one of my favourite stories. For the most part people defended their territories through sub-reddit chatter, and people (for the most part) ended up respecting one another’s work. But right at the death there was an attempt to completely destroy the US flag right at the center of place, but the US team managed to salvage it.

[gfycat id=InfamousShyEeve]

Unreal. What an amazing ride.


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