So what is this something kind of crazy happened? Last weekend the internet descended. Oh, it's lagging why something kind of crazy happened last weekend the internet descended. Yes, am i crazy? This is this lagging? Is it because it was applauded too early upon an online canvas of roughly four million pixels millions of people took part guys? I don't think it's my computer is it. This is a transistor.

Is one of the most important devices ever to be invented, so we're going to learn how they work in detail in something kind of crazy happened? Last weekend, it's not watchable something kind of crazy happened. Last weekend the internet descended upon an online canvas of roughly 4 million pixels. Millions of people took part in the great social experiment, known as our slash place. Art was made, wars were fought and at its peak it completely took over twitch whether you missed it or made it.

Here's how it all happened, all right guys. I spent a fairly large portion of my weekend watching this, mainly because i found it absolutely fascinating, but also because i knew i'd be making this video. So if you do enjoy it and you haven't subscribed yet, please consider doing so we're almost at 2 million subscribers and you could help us get there all right. Then, if you're sitting comfortably, let's get started, the story begins with a software engineer called josh wardle josh is a former product manager at reddit in 2015 he helped create the social experiment.

Game called the button which launched on april fool's day. Relatives were presented a 60 second time sounds pretty simple, but it absolutely activated reddit at the time and then on april fool's day 2017. He followed it up with something even greater: a subreddit called r slash place otherwise known simply as place. Oh and he's also been known more recently as the guy who created wordle.

Yes, as in word, he's been a busy bloke going back to place, though there was a large white canvas in which users could change the color of one pixel every 5 to 20 minutes. For the next three days over a million reddit users from hundreds of different communities piled onto the canvas to add their pixels. What started out as crude drawings, quickly evolved into elaborate pixel art created and maintained by organized teams of people, but very quickly. People realized that place wasn't just about creating art.

You had to defend it because anyone could change a pixel. If you wanted your art to stay in yeah, i'm done you and your team had to be on my higher level. Now we're not going into depth other channels have done that very well over the years. All you need to know, though, is that after 72 hours, when this thing ended, people thought that was the end of place forever.

Josh, wardle and reddick gave no indication that place. Would be returning, and so it became internet folklore. I somehow missed all of this at the time, and it became almost mythical to me, but five years later, last friday to be exact, our slash place returned on april fool's day once again and the internet lost its everyone and their mum piled onto the canvas, including Some of the biggest twitch streamers on the planet and almost immediately there were some recognizable features from the original place. The germans immediately started creating their canvas spanning flag and just like last time, a group who called themselves the blue corner did what their name was suggest and kept.

An entire corner. Blue. The ominous black voids began to appear in pockets too, threatening to swallow communities. Whole beautiful artwork began to pop up around the canvas.

There were some stunning recreations of famous paintings by the dutch, and there was also the ongoing hilarity of canada not being able to get their leaf right for pretty much the duration of the event. There was even a group of among us fans who were hell-bent on hiding their characters in everyone else's art. One favorite of mine was the group that made a working qr code, which led people to get rick rolled. There was a lot of impressive stuff out there, but the question was: how long was it going to last? There was always going to be random people looking to grief someone's art, but by far the biggest threat on the canvas were streamers and their armies of followers.

It's difficult to take over an area by yourself. The five minute cooldown between placing pixels means that large groups of people were extremely powerful. They could create or destroy in the blink of an eye when it came to destruction. One name in particular seemed to stand out.

Xqc he would lead his followers to create voids of black pixels that would stream across the cannabis swallowing anything in its way avoid it avoid it up into this yep yeah chad knows how to do it. I don't say anything guys. Next, push next push and a peak xqc chaos. He broke his own personal streaming record to reach an astounding way, really: 33 000 concurrent viewers and to be fair, he did create some pretty cool pieces of art with his community and really played the role of villain on the canvas.

Oh another classic hqc stuff. Now, at times, the destruction we've talked about was far more targeted. Looking across the canvas, you could see a lot of national flags areas claimed by people for their country. These flags became the staging grounds for huge battles like when xqc and his viewers tried to take on turkey's flag, because hassan refused to ally with him.

He is too big for his britches he's gon na take down turkey. I don't think so dude he doesn't want the smoke from the turkish army to come. Amazingly, the turkish community managed to defend their flag and push back xqc's attack, but the greatest battle was yet to come over the course of the weekend. The canvas had its size periodically increased at the beginning of the third expansion.

The french community quickly took up a large corner for their national flag on top of being accused of hogging too much space on the canvas. The french were also accused by spanish streamers, of using bots. This argument quickly, devolved into literal world war. Three, we attacked the russia because you, you type ratio of the french flag like it's, not respectful, okay, okay, listen to me! It's not respectful to use scripts and bots don't use scripts.

Oh my god! No! I have two clips of you using schizophrenia, but the script is to help people build okay, mom, i'm about to go to war with uh, i'm starting world war. Three right now with the french in spain, but as well. You know i love you. Okay, okay, bye, bye, wait! You don't actually want to ask if i'm gon na die bye.

The battle lines were drawn on the one side: the french community, hundreds of thousands of them, led by their most prominent streamers, on the other. The spanish were backed by big streamers, like ms kif and hassan, even xqc stopped. His chaos to join in the battle took place on the border between the french flag and the hezbollah mural. The goal was simple: give hezbollah some legs and shoes, thereby claiming a large chunk of the french territory shoes.

But despite the best efforts of the attackers, the french defended their flag. There were more accusations of them botting, especially because some of the accounts they were using seem to be very new, but reddit is an american site. It is plausible that the french viewers simply created fresh accounts for the occasion, and this was just one battle in a larger war. A heat map posted to reddit of the area shows just how much activity occurred there with the creator, claiming over one million users took part in this war alone, and that was just one storyline in one.

That's gon na be crazy. All over the canvas there were countless battles, storylines and creations, going on between communities, big and small. The creators of place had told everyone that the whole thing would end on monday, the 4th of april, but they didn't specify exactly when or how it would happen. I myself was sat there doing some repairs on the irish flag.

When suddenly i realized, i could now only place white tiles, no more color and slowly. It began to dawn on everyone. The creators had made it so that i don't know who fell first guys. What happened back into white again, we were going to do it for them at first.

There was a lot of confusion. What the is happening with friends that is insane everything is white. No, you can only put white every every every line. That's good! Take france! Oh, my god wait so then you might see which spots are botted.

Oh i mean france is getting white very fast. France is like deleting himself. France is deleting itself in the space of an hour. Millions of pixels and days of work had been wiped out.

It was quite poetic, seeing it return back to a white canvas once again, all right, chad, in the middle, keep it up. This was a lot of fun man. This was this was crazy. This was madness, yeah also i i i liked it only that's like five days, so it doesn't extend people don't thought it was the perfect, perfect length yeah.

I agree guys that flashback looks almost like um. I highly recommend interactive maps like this one. If you want to get detailed stories about every inch of the canvas, but for me that was the big picture in all of its pixelated glory. So what did this social experiment teach us well not to sound too soppy, but people can do dope things if they work together.

They can also be incredibly destructive and people will go to literal world war 3 on a canvas to defend a few pixels. What does all of that mean? I don't know. People are probably writing video essays about something as i speak, yeah, but now it was strange. It was shocking, it was fun and i think for many people it was great to feel a part of something to feel if only for a weekend that they had a place our place.

You know what rick roll means that was nice, that's kind of cool. I enjoyed it, it's a good piece. Okay, guys chat, you guys, guys, you guys guys i'm running out of juice. Just i guess i want to.

I don't want to stretch it. I've been away for like 28 hours, like that. I just want to go to bed and have a good time tomorrow. I had a good time.

You.