# /r/place /r/place is an interactive Reddit canvas launched as an April Fools' Day event on April 1, 2017, where users could place one colored pixel at a time on a 1000x1000 white grid. What started as a quiet novelty grew into a massive collaborative art project involving flag wars, fandom takeovers, and script bots, then came back in 2022 as one of Reddit's defining online social experiments. ## Origin Reddit launched /r/place on April 1, 2017 at 00:54 UTC as an April Fools' Day experiment, announced by admin Josh Wardle (u/powerlanguage) in an r/announcements post that framed the blank 1000x1000 grid as a place where users could "draw" by placing one colored tile at a time[3]. Only accounts registered before March 31, 2017 were eligible to place tiles, a rule aimed at keeping fresh throwaways off the board[2]. By 3 p.m. that afternoon, the subreddit had close to 86,000 subscribers, and by the time the event closed it topped 220,000[2]. Wardle shut the canvas to further edits on April 3, 2017 at 16:59 UTC, freezing the final image and ending the run[2]. Reddit later reported that more than one million users placed roughly 16 million tiles during the original event[1]. Reddit revived the project on April 1, 2022 for an 87-hour rerun that ended on April 4 at 9:00 p.m. PT, this time with a five-minute cooldown between placements and a widget baked into the home feed[1]. - **Platform:** Reddit - **Creator:** Josh Wardle (Reddit admin, u/powerlanguage) - **Date:** 2017 ## Overview The canvas ran on a strict rule set that made cooperation the only path to visible art. Each logged-in Redditor could drop a single tile from a 16-color palette, then had to wait before placing another, which meant meaningful images could only appear when subreddits, Discord servers, and off-site groups coordinated their placements[1]. The result was a chaotic mosaic where anime characters, national flags, video game logos, and abstract shapes like the Blue Corner and the black void fought for real estate in real time[2]. Groups formed almost immediately around defense and offense. The Red Corner and Blue Corner turned into the earliest competitive drawing factions, with the Blue Corner eventually claiming the largest single contiguous color block on the board[2]. Flag wars between country subreddits, fandom raids from communities like OSU! and Overwatch, and the constant threat of the expanding black void gave the canvas its recognizable texture of alliances, treaties, and open pixel warfare[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is /r/place? /r/place is a Reddit April Fools' Day event that gives users a shared 1000x1000 pixel canvas where each logged-in account can place one colored tile at a time from a 16-color palette[3]. ### Where did /r/place come from? Reddit admin Josh Wardle (u/powerlanguage) launched it on April 1, 2017 at 00:54 UTC as an experimental subreddit, and Reddit brought it back on April 1, 2022 for an 87-hour rerun[1]. ### What does /r/place mean? It refers to the interactive Reddit canvas itself, an experiment in what happens when individual pixel placements have to add up to something collective[1]. ### How do you use /r/place? When active, logged-in users tap a tile on the canvas, pick a color, and place it, then wait through a cooldown (five minutes in the 2022 version) before placing again, usually coordinating with a subreddit or Discord to build larger art[1]. ### Is /r/place still popular? It is classic rather than active; the canvas is only live during Reddit's April Fools' revivals, but the 2017 and 2022 events are still referenced whenever people talk about large-scale online collaboration[2]. ## References 1. [https://www.redditinc.com/blog/april-fools-on-reddit-is-no-joke-bringing-back-r-place]() 2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rplace]() 3. [https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/62mesr/place/]() 4. [https://github.com/Zequez/reddit-placebot]() 5. [https://x.com/i/status/1510765904124125190]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/rplace Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library