If you’re new to Reddit Place or/reddit, it’s best to start at the beginning. As the name already tells you, we are talking about a Reddit space, and at the time it was an interesting collaborative project, in which all users can participate. Imagine a huge blank panel, 2,000 by 2,000 pixels (four million dots in total), and the community creating, changing the color of those dots. Over the years it has been a peaceful space, in which users, at least for the most part, participated collaboratively.
This year, however, something has changed on Reddit Place, and that is the longstanding rivalry between Spain and France has exploded in this space, and it has done so quite virulently. And I say this year because, year after year, Reddit Place is only open for a few days, and the resulting panel remains visible for the rest of the year, until the next edition opens. Thus, the confrontation, which will last until six in the morning, within seven hours, when the panel is closed until next year.
Thus, Spanish and French users are attacking the designs of the rival country, something that would not have gone beyond a small anecdote, were it not for Twitch streamers as relevant as Ibai, ElRubius and AuronPlay on the Spanish side, and others equally relevant on the other side of the Pyrenees have joined the confrontation, and have been mobilizing their followers for several days to register on Reddit (those who do not already have an account, of course), and to join the boycott of Reddit Place designs from the rival country.
In addition, to tip the balance, both parties are trying to add the most diverse support. DFrom the ForoCoches community to the fan movement of the Korean musical group BTS, who call themselves Army, any support adds up, although in this game of loyalties and support nothing is free. In fact, the Army has asked, to support the Spanish community, that it in turn collaborate in maintaining the presence of BTS on Reddit Place.
The French side, more organized, has been using scripts for some time now that make it easy for French users to coordinate who defend their portion of the panel and attack those of Spanish and Latin American creators. a move that some of the rival streamers, mainly Ibai, have tried to avoid until the last moment. However, given the evidence that coordination has a key value, during the last few minutes they have changed their minds, so during the last hours of the confrontation they will also use them.
As well there are suspicions that the French community is using bots, and there are even users and streamers who claim that, by mistake, the French have leaked the Python code that they would be using in this conflict. As you can imagine, if you didn’t know what was going on, there has been a huge mobilization around it, with several hundred thousand users on each side, and the Reddit Place panel as the battlefield.
And how does Reddit Place work? In order to interact with the panel, users must be registered, and after modifying the color of a pixel, the user will have to wait five minutes to be able to modify another. Also, if two or more users simultaneously edit the same pixel, only one of them remains. And that is precisely the reason why the scripts that allow the coordination of actions are so important, and the reason why France has managed to preserve, until now, the large space that they have taken in the lower left corner of Reddit Place.
At a time when the word war gives us goosebumps, with the images of the trail of death left by the Russian troops in Bucha, being able to talk about a confrontation on Reddit Place, in which the obviously friendly confrontation limited to changing color pixels on a 2,000 by 2,000 point board, it provides a note of humor and color (never better said), as it serves to start a smile and leave us with a better taste in the mouth. So let’s battle it out on Reddit Place, that bottom left corner must be ours (and BTS’s)!
