Early this morning, I came across a post on my Facebook feed, one of those "click-bait" ones. The headline was something about social experiments with surprising outcomes. Scrolling through the post, I saw an interesting one about Reddit's April Fools 2017 social experiment /r/place; this was a blank 1000X1000 pixel canvas that Reddit users could edit, one pixel at a time. Users had a 16-color pallet that they could choose from to color-in the pixels. Users would place one colored pixel tile on the canvas, then have to wait anywhere from 5-20 minutes before they could place another tile.
In the beginning, users placed tiles, sometimes randomly, sometimes to create small pictures or words. Users quickly saw that they would need to work together to form larger images. Users were able to edit the canvas for 72 hours. Below is a timelapse of the experiment.
Some subreddits came together and coordinated their efforts to create large images, some users worked together to destroy images (ex. "the void"). Most Reddit users are already "produsers," but this was a very concrete example of Bruns' fundamental aspects of "produsers": Community-Based, Fluid Roles, Unfinished Artefact, and Common Property, Individual Merit (Bruns 2007). The "Unfinished Artefact" may be a bit of a stretch, the canvas was only editable for 72 hours. However, the "final product" continues to be used and discussed on the internet today, so there are still "produsers" out there using the image created on /r/place to produce new products. What are your thoughts?
One of those products is this video that explores 5 aspects of /r/place: Collaboration, Alliances, Enemies, Friendship, and Internet Culture. It is a short video that I recommend as it highlights what was happening during those 72 hours. See below.
And one last video I recommend is this Reddit user explaining how Maryland's Flag survived being taken over by Swedens. The collaboration that took place between thousands of users all over the world to create the final product of /r/place is truly amazing!
The collaboration that took place between thousands of users all over the world to create the final product of /r/place is truly amazing!
References:
Bruns, Axel (2007) Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age. In Proceedings ICE 3: Ideas, Cyberspace, Education, Ross Priory, Loch Lomond, Scotland.
Wow what a compelling example of produsage! I could watch that time-lapse over and over to focus on a different spot and see new things over and over. Very cool, thanks for sharing!
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