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Comment by unsupp0rted | Hacker News Reader

I don't like /r/place - I spend time in several regional subreddits, and they've transferred their nationalistic identity wars to Reddit. They're constantly fighting to build and rebuild their flags.

Now those regional subs are littered with one post after another of "come on, we need your help to defend our flag" nonsense.

It's all pointless and divisive.

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It's a game. Games can have competition. Sometimes that's what makes them fun.

And flags are some of the few pixel arts that most people can casually coordinate for, once the intended size is apparent.

One might call it a "capture the flag"

it's a game that overtakes many subreddits for a significant period of time.

> It's all pointless and divisive.

It's not pointless. Divisiveness drives engagement; engagement drives ad money.

I wonder if they count all the bots as active users

A theory that's been floating around is that they might intentionally not have implemented anti-bot measures, in order to pump up user numbers for their IPO.

It was divisive everywhere. I saw so many posts from folks arguing why X or Y shouldn't be on the board, or shouldn't use up so much space, or how flags were too boring. I stopped playing after the first day because of all the anger around it.

I saw a lot of people having fun and didn't see people getting really angry. Though I'm sure there were people actually getting angry, that happens with every game. Maybe those people should relax more, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I was part of a community maintaining a small logo that got attacked a few times, and we repaired it - part of the fun. I agree with the people who think a canvas full of flags is kind of boring and wish people didn't jump so quickly into nationalistic identities as a way to express themselves, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Yeah I was part of a community that coordinated several logos/art pieces and it was a lot of fun. Almost all of the communities in the area we were in banded together into an alliance and we beat off a bunch of attacks, mainly streamers who thought we looked like easy pickings.

Agreed on the flags though, they're just so boring. At least a lot of the flags ended up with artwork on them this time though. Some of the big streamers were pretty irritating too, they just seemed like they wanted to ruin peoples fun. I don't mind chaos but it's more interesting if it's a swarm like the void and not just some guy screaming into a mic to attack a random spot.

I think the flags with artwork were brilliant. People coming together and deciding plus coordinating what should be the cultural piece they wanted to be immortalised in the limited space. I didn't participate in placing the pixels but spent some good time just browsing the flags and deciphering the references placed on them.

This was also my experience. I was jumping between F1 and Star Wars and had a great time maintaining and branching out.

I was really impressed by the level of detail as more shades were introduced.

A good chunk of that anger was because of trolls. People extending someone else's flag over other's artwork, random streamers calling their followers for vandalism, and general griefing. Since regular users are limited to one pixel every five minutes, it can be exasperating to see their effort erased in a few seconds.

You might be missing the point of those who disagree with your take, which is to call those who want to do different things on /r/Place than you 'trolls' or 'griefers' is itself just you projecting your own value judgment onto them, or acting as if you are the judge of what is right and wrong.

From the perspective of someone who likes /r/theblackvoid, the pixel artists coloring over the void are just trolls and griefers.

So the parent would refer to anyone 'complaining' about other users as unnecessarily angry. Whether it's a flag person mad that some other flag or art or void or whatever is drawing over their flag, or whether it's a void person mad at the flag person, or whether its a pixel artist mad at the flag person, it's all just people projecting their own preference as if its some moral imperative.

Who are you to say that streamers shouldn't use their followers to leave a mark? Or that chaos and randomly placing pixels isn't a valid goal? You may personally find it really stupid and annoying. I personally find baseball really stupid and annoying. But I wouldn't refer to people who enjoy baseball as trolls.

Dr. Seuss' butter battle is the perfect illustration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butter_Battle_Book

I do think the failure of Reddit to deploy even the most basic of anti-bot measures made the endeavour less authentic. If it had been all humans, sure; duke it out and may the stronger community win. As it stands, though, the communities with the largest number of bots occupied the largest amount of space (hence the massive German, Belgian and Dutch flags).

Of course, this might have been intentional; there's a theory that this was Reddit's attempt to pump up user numbers for their IPO.

r/Place is inherently organized chaos, so anyone can leave their mark if they are able to. Unfortunately there's a sizable subset of people that don't want to leave a mark, and only want to vandalize other's marks, participating solely to draw funny eyes, broken teeth, penises, or simply erase whole sections.

I'd go as far as to qualify people who practiced r/TheBlackVoid in the canvas as antisocial, since filling a single-color void requires very little cooperation between themselves.

The problem is it isn't your mark, maybe you feel differently because before you clicked the pixel it was white/blank. Or your group decided it would be yours. There is no ownership. There is no rule requiring cooperation or organization or socializing.

I'm not saying someone shouldn't be disappointed their art was overwritten. But again this gets back to my comment about the whole thing being divisive. You've demonstrated my entire point by saying /r/TheBlackVoid as using /r/place incorrectly.

The first time was really fun and exciting, one of the last times reddit felt like an actual community and not an agitprop botspam amplifier.

Honestly, Robin was the last time I felt like reddit was actual people, instead of bots and bullshit. The random chats that grew or died was a fascinating way to talk to new people. it was genuinely fun.

Now they have a chat feature apparently (I'm always on RIF now) but I'm betting that's just awful.

> It's all pointless and divisive.

Seems unfair to blame this on a game. It's more a sign of the times we live in.

If you look at r/place and see a bunch of flags … look closer? Sure, there are flags. There is also a ridiculous amount of pixel art created and protected by tireless fans of the games that have left their mark all over the canvas.

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