THE BEST APRIL FOOLS’ JOKE OF 2022: R/PLACE.

This article is a sign that there's nothing people can't do when they're together, and it's a canvas of humanity's brain, what freedom is in a nutshell, and how did an April Fool's joke turn into the first Metaverse war ever?

If you're surfing social media, even Reddit these days, it's unlikely you've not heard of the thing called r/place. Let's first take a deep look at what this thing is, and then look deeper into people's brains.

How did r/place came out and what is it?

r/place is a social experiment of the world famous social media called Reddit. This social experiment was also held in 2017, but at that time, Reddit's active users were between about 200K and 300K, so it did not make much noise. But this year, millions of Reddit's users joined this event including me, influencers, streamers and more, pouring their brains onto the canvas. At this event, Reddit initially gave people a empty canvas with 1 million pixels and announced it. People has been able to access this canvas at reddit.com/r/place. And everyone could paint anything on this canvas, there has been no rules. The only rule has been to wait 5 minutes after you painted 1 pixel. And people started to draw small things, but there has been a problem, other people could point pixels on the pixels they pointed, so even small artworks couldn't stay there longer than a minute. After that, influencers with hundred of thousands of followers opened live broadcasts on websites like Twitch and drew with their followers. The first things that were drawn were countries' flags. Then people started drawing the characters they liked, and then the memes. Everything you can think of has been drawn there. Then things got hot because other people started to draw their own country flags on others' country flags. A hot war broke out between streamers. For example, Turkish streamer Elraenn painted the Turkish Flag and a portrait of Atatürk, but another streamer named xQc destroyed the Turkish flag 2 times. He managed to do it with 208K people, but with 128K viewers Elraenn defeated him. Even after the event ended, xQc received death threats. Reddit is flooded with memes mocking of him. But he had already made a statement. He said that when he saw that there were those who attacked the flags around the Turkish flag, he he attacked the Turkish flag and thought it was just a pixel game. The biggest proof of his thinking like this is that xQc attacked the French flag despite being French.

How did it become popular?

At first, Reddit announced this event on their social media with a title: "r/place is live!"

Then, when people saw the Reddit's post, they immediately tried to draw something, but this event, which would last for 5 days, had a judge: Turks. The Turks were very ready for this, because Turkish YouTuber Porçay, the owner of the r/burdurland subreddit, announced that this event will start in 1 day by uploading a video called "it is a day of unity" (in English translate) in March 31st. Turkish Twitch streamer Elraenn drew the Turkish flag, then a portrait of Atatürk, and on the 3rd day, he drew the Barış Manço. Of course, he succeeded it with 128K people. Perhaps the most popular in its popularity were other subreddits on Reddit. The r/place subreddit was being talked about even in other subreddits. And friends, people have told their friends about it, and r/place event became popular thanks to these and a lot of other things I didn't count. In fact, a Turkish television channel made a news about it with the title "Pixel War". This has also been talked about a lot on the r/place subreddit. If you wondering what is a subreddit, you can think of it like the Facebook's groups feature.

Better, together.

The biggest thing that the r/place event taught people has been "Better, together." Because those huge and dazzling works that made TV channels to make this event as were realized thanks to the organization of thousands, even millions of people. It couldn't be done with one person, or even hundreds of people. Because someone else could paint pixels on the pixel you painted, and you had to wait 5 minutes to paint another pixel after painting one pixel.

How did this event end?

"Reddit Place ended with a joke called anti-void. Reddit gave users white color paint, causing them to unconsciously destroy the canvas."

- @in1_minute, Twitter. (Shortened.)

In short

In short, people noticed the importance of to be organized, succeed and resist, what organizing means. When everyone started to paint in white, the warring people made peace and remembered that war is absurd and that peace is the important thing.

According to the latest news, this canvas will be in sale as NFT, and now everyone is starting to wonder how much this NFT will cost.

I have a suggestion for pricing: In fact, this canvas has 4 million pixels and that's why, this NFT should cost 4 million dollars and Reddit should give each user dollars as much as the total pixels that that user has painted, so that those who contributed to the creation of this NFT get the much money they deserve.

You can download the version of this canvas which taken 30 seconds before it disappears, which is contributed by almost every person from every country, in 8K quality (shared by u/hotchilly_11 on r/place on Reddit) here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15mGpMvHG36fcaK7YjD8ho9s0XwtML8AS/view?usp=drivesdk