There’s a lot that can be said about Reddit’s April Fool’s Day “joke,” the subreddit known as r/place. In r/place, users are able to place individual pixels at a rate of one per five minutes, collaborating with thousands of other users, either to help create a mosaic of art or to destroy that art to make room for something new. Imagine that power in the hands of a popularTwitchstreamer and their community. Now imagine dozens of popularTwitchstreamers battling each other for pixel territory. That’s the current state of r/place.To capture exactly what’s happening in r/place, take Twitch streamer Mizkif’s brief summary of his interaction with the subreddit. Mizkif explains that when r/place first started, he and his community made a little Peepo piece of art inspired by his Twitch emotes. He says that soon afterTwitch streamer xQcdiscovered r/place and had his community obliterate the little Peepo. Mizkif moved to a different area of r/place, only for xQc to target the new area, too. Things get worse from there.RELATED:Top Level Twitch Executives Are Leaving the Company"So now, [xQc]’s attacking me everywhere, which means [BruceDropemOff] is attacking America, OTK’s getting canceled, and now we’re going over here and we’re attacking xQC," is howMizkifdescribes the fallout. Twitch streamers are striving to create and protect their own patches of r/place, only to start battles with other Twitch streamers, which builds to rampant destruction outside the Twitch streamer community. It’s a disaster in motion.
For the most part, each individualTwitch streamerdedicates just a small amount of time and energy to r/place. It’s not a particularly interactive experience, after all. Twitch streamers will come in, have a bit of fun, and then go back to their regularly scheduled content.
It’s important to clarify thatReddit’s r/placeis not taken seriously in the slightest. A big part of it is that r/place is built to be temporary, lasting just four days overall. It’ll end soon. Since everyone knows that, everyone understands that it’s all for fun. With that said, some people are taking it more serious than others.Twitchstreamers do tend to be very competitive, though.
MORE:Reddit’s Top Five Most-Viewed Subreddits of 2021 Were All Gaming Related
