r/place

Copied from /u/hrtfthmttr redditor

It's pixel art from Reddit's newest April Fool's fun, /r/place. When you go to that sub, each reddit account gets to place one pixel from 8 16 colors on a shared canvas before a timer starts. Once the timer is up, you get to place another pixel.

The timer basically forced people into organizing around drawing anything more than a random mosaic. Subreddits have formed, there is diplomacy, strategy, and rivalry among organized groups all fighting to create art or expand across the canvas, each group battling each other as well as the writhing chaos of the uncoordinated hivemind placing random pixels and trying to destroy or otherwise convert everything into a swastika. As a result, memes, jokes, and hilarity has been born.

One particularly fun example: the Germans and French painted their respective flags, and then in historical German fashion, Germany began to expand unilaterally, consuming territory towards France. Germany nearly subsumed France until it escaped north. It was a furious fight on who would overlap who, until peace was reached--the intersection became the European Union flag.

Watch here. The Germany/France event happened lower left, about halfway through. Note the slow progress in the middle hours was due to a slowing of the timer by almost about 4 times, going from 5 min wait time to place pixels up to 20. There was a successful petition to return to lower wait times the evening of the 31st (US time).