In terms of weird, creative, interesting things that happened on the ‘internet’ this year /r/place has to rank pretty high.
/r/place was a blank slate. Users could put a single pixel on that blank slate and creation demanded collaboration. What resulted reflected internet culture in all its gory glory.
Now we have an incredible website that explains what was left in the wasteland.
It’s called the /r/place Atlas and it’s site that essentially explains the history of place on a visual field. You can click on almost every part of the final design and have it explained in detail.
For Australians, this might have been the coolest section. A collaborative effort by the good people of /r/straya:
The cool thing about this website is you can just flick a mouse around the /r/place art and have it explained on the fly.
Here’s the explanation of the Australian section:
Here’s what the site says about the Steve Irwin portrait — which was mildly vandalised, but still managed to make it to the end.
A tribute to the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, courtesy of /r/Straya. Unfortunately, Steve was vandalized a bit before the final frame of /r/place – as a result, he’s got an odd smiley line where his face should be and his date of death is wrong. It should be 4/9/06
My favourite part is the description of the Bunnings Snags logo:
The logo for Bunnings Warehouse, Australia’s largest home hardware store franchise. ‘Snags’ is an Australian colloquialism for sausages, so this logo refers to the weekly sausage sizzles held on all Bunnings premises.
I’m dying a death over here.
The best part of this website: this level of detail exists for every single nook and cranny of /r/place. It existed for such a short period of time, but so much happened. It’s fascinating.
Take a look here. This shit belongs in a museum.