- April 1 to 3, 2017
- 1,000 by 1,000 pixels
- 16 colors
r/place 2017. What happened.
The first one. A million people, one thousand squares on a side, and a cooldown long enough that every pixel was a decision.
- over 1 million players
- about 16 million
- Archived. Nothing on this canvas can be repainted
- When
- April 1 to 3, 2017
- Canvas
- 1,000 by 1,000pixels
- Palette
- 16 colors
- Players
- over 1 million
- Pixels placed
- about 16 million
- Cooldown
- 5 to 20 minutes, depending on whether your email was verified
The palette
Every color anyone had to work with, all 16 of them. The constraint is the reason the canvas looks the way it does.
What happened
Reddit opened a blank million-square canvas on April Fools' Day with almost no explanation: one pixel, sixteen colors, then a wait of five to twenty minutes. The long cooldown was the design. When a pixel costs you a quarter of an hour, you do not spend it carelessly, and the only way to make anything larger than a few squares is to organize with people who will spend theirs the same way.
What grew out of that was the template: a picture agreed in advance, shared as coordinates, and filled by dozens of people who never spoke to each other. Flags took territory, subreddits claimed corners, and the void ate whatever was undefended. Every edition since has run on the same social machinery.
A million people is a small number by the standards of what came later, and the canvas still filled. Three days was enough because the cooldown made every square deliberate.
How it ended
Reddit closed the canvas on April 3 and left the final image up.
The 2017 canvas is a picture now. It is archived, nothing on it can be repainted, and every account that painted it is looking at the same still image you are.
See the final canvas
The community atlas draws the 2017 canvas and labels the art on it: The /r/place Atlas, or The 2017 r/place Atlas. Every final canvas is on the r/place map page, with its size, its palette and its atlas.
Common questions
When was the first r/place?
April 1 to 3, 2017, as Reddit's April Fools experiment.
How big was the 2017 canvas?
1,000 by 1,000, a million squares, and it never expanded.
How long was the cooldown in 2017?
Between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on whether your Reddit account had a verified email.
How many people played r/place 2017?
Over a million, placing about 16 million pixels across three days.
One shared map of the real world, cut into 10-meter squares. Find the street you live on, pick a color, and paint it.
start painting