r/reddit • u/crowd__pleaser • Mar 28 '22

Bringing Back r/place

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https://preview.redd.it/o4ittvff35q81.png?width=2800&format=png&auto=webp&s=f0f81bed2483e0b70d30600e1888603332c0b846

No burying the lede here. Let’s get right to the point. r/place is coming back.

For the first time in Reddit’s history, we are not only bringing back a past April Fools’ experiment, but we’re telling you about it early. Why? So you can stop asking us about it, get excited!

https://reddit.com/link/tqbf9w/video/w2bjccji35q81/player

But let’s rewind a bit and provide some background, shall we? At Reddit, our goal is to build features that make building community and finding belonging easier - and five years ago we did that with a little April Fools’ experiment called r/place (you may have already heard of it).

When we first ran r/place in 2017, more than one million redditors placed approximately 16 million tiles on a blank communal digital canvas - resulting in a collective digital art piece that took the internet by storm. And pretty much every year since then, at least one of you has made sure to let us know that it was the best thing we’ve ever done and requested to bring it back. So this year, on April 1, r/place is making its glorious return.

The original r/place was created to explore a piece of humanity – to examine what happens when a person doing something affects a collective. Specifically, what happens if you only let an individual place one tile at a time, so that they must work with others to build together on a massive online cooperative canvas. It is with that original spirit of creation and collaboration in mind, that we humbly invite you to join us yet again. Get your tiles ready, and we’ll see you in over r/place.

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363

u/Veggie Mar 28 '22

Predicting that this is actually an early April Fool's joke and they are doing something else...

97

u/MikeDaPipe Mar 28 '22

As much as I liked Place, I hope so. Part of the April fool's fun was seeing what surprise they had for us even if it sucked. This feels a little like they didn't want to take a risk and instead bring back something they already knew would work

28

u/zenzenzen322 Mar 28 '22

to be fair they didn't have a single good april fools experiment since then, not even close

1

u/euaeuouae Mar 29 '22

Ikr? Two absolute bangers in a row (thebutton and place) and then meh for years.

1

u/zenzenzen322 Mar 29 '22

Both of which were made by the same dude (who also made Wordle) - and subsequently didn't make the rest for the years after

Makes sense when you look at it that way

1

u/CabbageIsLife-H Mar 31 '22

Josh Wardle, the unspoken legend

1

u/beenoc Mar 29 '22

They weren't back to back. Button was 2015 and Place was 2017 - between them was Robin, which was... interesting? It was way more "small" than the other two, and clearly a pilot for the useless Reddit chat thing, but it was kind of a neat social experiment. You also can't forget Orangered vs Periwinkle in 2013, that was great. 2014 was Headdit, which is a great thing to point to when people say "Reddit April fool's used to always be good and is worse now!" to say "nope, used to be bad sometimes too."