The story of r/Place. As told by a foot soldier from r/Mexico (Part 3)
Or the nagging feeling that somewhere out there, my primary school history teacher is laughing maniacally.
Long long time ago, in a forgotten spot of the Canvas, a group of Mexicans tried to tame a green lizard…
It would be the first big controversy within our group, the moment when we would test how we worked as a community, as a team. It was the First Day, and after many tribulations, our national flag was finally complete. The time to expand our place on the Canvas was at hand, but there was one small problem: A Yoshi under construction standing in our way.
I can’t recall exactly where the following discussion happened. Whether it was in the r/Mexico subreddit, which had become the hub of operations for our projects at the Canvas, or whether this happened in the dark, smoke-filled Discord channel, a chat service which had become the de facto method of communication all over r/Place.
What I do recall, is that many, many arguments were thrown, both in favor of respecting the existence of this Yoshi in our southern border, as well as calls of war for its extermination. Word on the street was that the Yoshi was a small-scale project by just a few individuals, and it hadn’t been adopted yet by the gigantic communities of the Nintendo or Mario Kart subreddits, whose creations were quick to become powerful Titans. So at least in that regard, overpowering the Yoshi seemed feasible, given sheer numeric advantage.
On the other hand, going to War so soon in the life of our small, young place seemed… well, wrong. At least, it felt like it for those of us who advocated for Yoshi’s preservation. Furthermore, if in the future we happened to be invaded by some hostile neighbor, how could we argue convincingly, to ourselves, and to others, for our right to exist on this Canvas if we hadn’t extended the same courtesy to this one green lizard?
And boy, would we need of this moral high-ground in the future…
Now, I can’t tell if this was the moment in particular that sealed the decision for us. But for me at least, nothing better captured the shift in the community’s zeitgeist as a new meme suddenly being repeated over and over all across our many forums:
Which is a funny bastardization of a saying by Benito Juarez, Mexico’s 26th president who most Mexicans remember as either the first president from indigenous descent, the president who served during France’s invasion in the 1860’s, or just as ‘that guy from the $20 peso bill’.
And of course by this phrase, who elementary school children learn ad nauseam:
This would be the first, but certainly not the last time that our shaky, public-school understanding of Mexico’s history would creep into our interpretation of the events of the Canvas. But alas, I’m getting ahead of myself.
For the meme worked its magic on the hive mind of our group, and peacefulness eventually prevailed. Yoshi became regarded as a friend to our subreddit. Later, it would become our protegee, and eventually, our beloved mascot who Mexican users would repair from even the smallest of vandalism without any prompting by its original creators. We would even help stop a brief invasion from the Spanish Flag that threatened Yoshi’s place. That much we loved that goofy lizard (and that much we loved the irony fighting Spain… again).
This event was huge in our community. But it was also huge for me. For this peaceful consensus sealed the deal for me on whether or not I would stay and fight by their side, and make the r/Mexico place on the Canvas my new home.
For I had arrived somewhat later on that First Day, after having wandered aimlessly for hours around the Canvas, offering my pixels in the repair of stray vandalism here and there, but never commiting to a bigger project. And after having helped the now dying BlueCorner for a short while, only to realize that its quasi-cult mystique had grown stale, and repetitive.
Lost amidst a sea of seemingly-equal options, with dozens of fandoms, games and media to offer the services of my cursor, at some point I wandered back to the language-friendly subreddit of r/Mexico, curious as to what my fellow countrymen had made on the Canvas, if anything. And I must confess, discovering that they had not only organized themselves, but were near the completion of our country’s flag right in the middle of White Sprinkled space, left me quite impressed. For in my mind, the r/Mexico subreddit was a stale, snail-paced forum, far, far down in my list of communities where one would expect to find such levels of cooperation.
But now, seeing how they had spared the Yoshi, and had effectively chosen a live-and-let-live expansionist philosophy, it filled me with hope on what we could accomplish next. The promise was there for our small group to endure and thrive till the End of Times, whenever they happened to arrive. For no community fights longer or harder for its survival, than the one who knows it is alone in giving a damn about its very existence.
After all, if a Pokemon was ravaged by vandals on the Canvas, strangers would come to its aid given how everyone loves Pokemon. But who cared, other than Mexicans (or Italians with bad eyesight), for the fate of our small tricolor flag?
People love to argue about how the Internet is just one big exercise in the art of wasting time. Of the acquirement of skills that useless in the “real world”. But this weekend, while playing a dumb online game from a meme aggregator website, I surprised myself in discovering that I do have a patriotism bone inside of me. I did cared about whether our marvelously flawed country would endure forever in the final installment of r/Place. It’s footprint preserved, for the world to see.
Who knew?
A Nation, within a Nation
That being said, being part of r/Mexico at this time was an exercise in both patience and tolerance to high levels of frustration.
For even the smallest of projects were massive undertakings in door-knocking to lobby for support, the spread of contradicting or outdated information, the rejection of dozens of great pixelart designs in favor of terrible ones, and the always present unpredictability of the rule by mob.
Worst of all, even if you had a functioning “government body”, who had somehow agreed on a single policy and plan to follow, there was no way for it to enforce its will on its citizens. For users could place their pixels whenever they wanted, for whatever reason they wished for. How could anyone direct the individual decisions of these hundreds cursors in a single direction?
Hey! Also like… ok, I’ll stop now…
Learning this fine art of governance became especially arduous during the nation’s first big reconstruction project: Expanding the small “Viva Mexico” slogan to the more visible, and definitely more satisfying to shout out-loud: “¡Viva Mexico Cabrones!”
If you watch a time lapse of r/Place on this area, the transition from one slogan design to the next looks like a straight-forward manner. But in the long, grueling hours it took place, it was the source of incredible confusion and anger on the community. For some were angry at the change, while others were enthusiastic. Some were not even aware that a change was happening, and fought against their comrades pixels as if they were an invading force. To top it all off, many didn’t even know where to place their pixels, nor how to read the pixel charts of the final design (which many more didn’t even knew existed at all).
Our group would eventually find better ways to reach community verdicts, such as migrating all possible conversations into a single Discord channel, keeping spokespersons at the subreddit to communicate decisions to those out of the loop, keeping a set of pinned messages and final designs for everyone to see, and so on.
But even when this new bureaucratic apparatus was firing in all cylinders, even the organizers could only push the group towards a certain outcome, giving as much communication and laying as much breadcrumbs for people to follow, before they could only sit back and hope for the best. And like a gigantic ship turning, the slow placement of pixels would eventually let them know if the wordless hive mind had followed their directions. If ever.
A Cartoon Federation
I mentioned before how the emerging Mexican nation chose a live-and-let-live foreign policy thanks to the success of the early Yoshi alliance. But just as with the remodeling projects, this was not so much a one-time thing, but a slow and confusing process.
For next to Yoshi, there would be at least 3 more groups who would collide with our initial expansionist push. The Duck, from r/DuckGame, Fred Flintstone (better known by its creators as Grand Dad, or Fleenstar), from r/GiIvaSunner, and the red Robin from last year’s April Fool’s experiment: r/JoinRobin.
And I must mention, till this day, I don’t know anything about these 3 communities, the characters they represented. More importantly, nor did the vast majority of Mexicans when they first laid eyes on them.
So unlike Yoshi, which is an almost universally known and beloved video game character, there was no reason in people’s minds to respect these niche fandoms who clocked from 9,000 to 1,500 subscribers vs r/Mexico’s 90 thousand.
Which is not to say that ALL of our 90 thousand subscribers were participating in r/Place. If only…
Unsurprisingly, before any deliberation could be made, before any ambassadors could be sent to negotiate with the other side, our mob moved, and moved fast. For people began placing pixels in the construction of a cartoonish red pepper just above The Duck’s head, causing panic and skirmishes at the conflicted area.
Thankfully, cooler heads soon prevailed. And the invaded subreddit rushed their ambassadors to our subreddit in search for peace. One Sombrero later, a shiny brick was laid in the construction of our now nascent Federation.
A similar story happened later when we tried to expand towards Fleenstar, where a short skirmish led to a happy armistice after both our ambassadors met. We would eventually help Grand Dad defend itself against an aggression by the neighboring UK. And thus, another ally joined our ranks.
I have to admit, I’m not sure what kind of talk happened behind closed doors between our envoys and r/JoinRobin, that led to peace. Nor what transpired in smoke-filled Discord channels, private messages and forums between r/Mexico and the Team Fortress 2 clans on the east, the CS:GO folks on the north, or even with our UK neighbors on the west. All I know is that after the largest exercise in international diplomacy ever attempted by our subreddit, by the start of the Second Day, our borders were secured and we were now free to thrive within the shared space of our new Federation.
And for a time, it was glorious. For once secure in our borders, our builders and soldiers were deployed to remote locations around the map, grabbing whatever little places of untamed land they could find in the name of the green, white and red WE-ARE-NOT-ITALY, coalition.
Not even the advent of the terrifying Bots on the dusk of the Second Day seemed to scare us. For we now had our own geeks among our ranks, and they had programmed their own Bots to help us secure our lands from vandals or invaders. We were not the most powerful, or even the most extended subreddit out there. But against the odds, the confusion, the contradicting orders and skirmishes with our neighbors, we had somehow prevailed. And that filled us with pride.
And while no one knew how long r/Place would continue to exist, by this point in time, it was a safe to bet that r/Mexico and its Allies would make it to the finish line. For we had the manpower, the technology, and the time, in our favor.
After all, besides the hollow threats by the Donald Trump subreddit, who had little presence in the Canvas to begin with, no one seemed to care about our existence, or our demise…
The problem about living this low-key life however, is that while the chances of hostilities are low, so are the chances of allies comming to your aid should the hostilities do happen…
The Nightstorm
How innocent it sounds, in retrospect, that in the early morning hours of that Monday, April 3rd, the big topic of conversation among the few guards who stayed awake in these ungodly hours, was a discussion about pyramids.
We Mexicans complain all the time that we pay too much attention to news about the USA, sucking our attention spans from the arguably more important news on local topics.
How ironic then, that the ONE night we should have been paying close attention to the ‘Gringos’, we were nowhere to be seen.
In these silent moments, The Void was carrying a massive invasion of the US flag. And in the hours that followed, it would become a famous example of resilience of a well-organized community against this Wicked Enemy. For not only was The Void successfully pushed away, but the US flag was rebuilt in record time even against the opportunistic attacks by the neighboring r/RainbowRoad and r/Ireland. The Americans endured not only thanks to their huge number of followers and bot armies, but the sympathy of a horrified Canvas who immediately helped them rebuild their ravaged place.
Yet such sympathy would not prove to be evenly distributed.
After the attack on the American flag, The Void regrouped and planned its next move. And you got to recall, by this point in r/Place’s history, they had grown to become a massive, highly organized, swift and efficient fighting force. One literally able to ambush even the most fortified and protected places of the Canvas, weakening them to its knees.
Such was the menace of The Void, that even our small subreddit had a spy infiltrating their Discord channel, pretending to be just another drone of their Black Swarm. And what he saw them discussing next, was terrifying…
I must say, our spy was good. For he tried his best to discourage The Enemy from attacking us. Playing their buttons and sensibilities little by little.
But it would all be in vain. For our spy was betrayed from a mole in our ranks.
And before you know it…
12 pixels per Person, per Hour
Panic spread like wildfire through our Discord channel as the attack commenced. Which was that much more desperate given how few people were awake at this time.
Caught by surprise, our night soldiers swiftly tried to repel the Dark Plague. Dozens of our cursors took aim at each new black pixel, and fired colorful salvos to try and undo the damage being done. But our pixels, few as they were, soon were joined by the fire of allies that came to our help, as well as the gallant mercenaries known as r/FightTheVoid who patrolled the Canvas in aid of anyone being attacked by this terrible force.
Pixel after pixel, salvo after salvo was fired during this long battle just before dawn. Guards who had stayed awake all night protecting our Land, were now in the middle of a fierce fight. Placing one pixel, waiting, placing another. Hoping throughout it all, for more reinforcements to come.
But there’s only so many sandbags you can place against a flood. So many shock-absorbers you can install against an earthquake. And so many pixels you can rescue from The Void who Consumes it All.
I think it’s safe to say that every single Mexican learns on school the story about the Niños Heroes, or “Boy Heroes”. Six Mexican teenage military cadets who died defending Mexico City’s Chapultepec Castle from invading US forces during the Mexican–American War of 1847. And even if people don’t know this story, then at least they recognize their names thanks to the popular tale of how the last one died jumping from the castle’s cliff while wrapped around a Mexican Flag (or so the legend goes).
Not to mention the fact that at least ONE avenue on every single Mexican city is named after them.
An so, history once again found a familiar tune to rhyme to. For just like the Chapultepec battle back then, the heroic last efforts of these Dawn Soldiers did not stop the invasion from succeeding. And following the similarities, nor did they stopped the massive stealing of territory that would soon follow.
An English-speaking country trying to grab our land… again?
The Void’s wrath is a horrible sight to witness. But The Void’s focus is also feeble, and it’s very nature is nomad. For all storms end at some point, and this storm was no exception.
So as daylight broke at last, and as hundreds of Mexicans awoke to the heart-wrenching sight of their homeland being ravaged, every new arrival set upon themselves the task to rebuild.
But alas, it wouldn’t be so easy. For it wasn’t just us who were looking at this black crater who had replaced our homeland. Across the gulf of the ocean, minds as similar as ours, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, saw this new black space with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Now, I do not claim to understand the UK’s true motivations. But in my view the United Kingdom, who long ago had struggled to reaffirm its place on the Canvas (as it had battled with itself with multiple flag sizes and designs that their people couldn’t agree on), had been soon relegated to a comparatively small place of their own. It was at least, no match compared to their counterparts of Scandinavia, Germany, France, or even Ireland.
In short, the UK was stuck inside a small island, and was eager to expand. Now why does THAT story sounds so familiar…?
But then, an opportunity had just landed on their laps! And as one of our spies soon found out, the vast British Bot army was only waiting for The Void to retreat before it could begin its invasion. And with it, was a new and infamous design made just for the space that our home had once occupied:
And so, in a matter of minutes, our soldiers were called upon battle once more. For The Enemy was no longer some unknown, unwieldy force of nature, but the face of an old friend. A neighbor we had considered, foolishly perhaps, as an ally we could count on during these times of need.
In retrospect, it’s remarkable how unanimous the response from our community was to this cowardly back-stabbing. For in previous international incidents, our people had been generally hesitant and stuttering, shifting from one position to the next as we weighed our options. Consensus we had learned, was not in a hurry for r/Mexico.
Not this time thou.
An Amy of Robots faces an Army of Office Workers.
The fight exploded as soon as the first tendrils of red and white speared into our homeland. Our soldiers, waking up one by one, soon discovered a live battlefield on their screens. But they quickly got briefed on what to do, and immediately set into motion.
Our small bot army however, was not yet ready for this fight, for they were blindingly busy in reconstructing the old design rather than on blocking the cascade of red and white pixels from the UK, which was the first-most priority at this moment.
To make matters worse, this being a Monday morning in Mexico, many of our geeks were just starting their work weeks in offices, schools and homes all over the country. And they were completely oblivious to what was happening at the Canvas as they crawled in traffic, left their kids at school, got breakfast, or talked with their coworkers as their computers booted on.
Meanwhile, the UK was 6 hours ahead, with some of their own geeks already finishing their schedules. They had more free time in their hands, more excuses to ignore work, and ambitions of conquest already planned and set into motion.
In short, this was a widely asymmetrical battle. For our Enemy was more sober, more determined, and laser-focused on its task at hand. Our Army on the other hand, was for the most part suffering from Time Traveler Syndrome. Dispersed, confused, terrified, and demoralized, there was simply not enough time to coordinate our efforts, both with ourselves and with our also shell-shocked allies, to mount an effective defense.
One thing was clear thou. Our pixel shots, our unwieldy bots, our battle plans, would all become useless once the Englishmen managed to establish a beach head deep in our land. Experience, both in past skirmishes, and from similar events around the Canvas, had told us that once this threshold was crossed, for all intents and purposes, the War would be lost before it even began.
It became clear, that in order to survive, we needed a simpler, faster way to coordinate our efforts. We also needed to not just defend ourselves, but to attack, to put The Enemy on the defensive.
But in order to do that, we needed to know what the hell we were even drawing
And whatever it was, it needed to be simple, so that people would not get confused as they tried to follow some complex pixel grid.
It also needed to be recognizable, so that any new soldier who just arrived, would instantly know what we were trying to do, and join the fight.
But above all, it needed to be powerful, so that people had a reason to ignore their work, their studies, their breakfast, for just enough time, to give us the upper hand in this fight.
This new, massive symbol was not without its controversy. Many derided its simplistic, almost ‘boring’ design, and many more worried that following this path meant that we would be effectively turning our backs to our long-held allies. For we would be abandoning TheDuck and Fleenstar as the colors of this new design would be placed all over their carcasses. Countless hours of diplomacy, tokens of goodwill, moments spent fighting by their side, and they by ours; could be wasted in an instant.
Our peaceful Federation, bent to its knees by the threat of The Enemy, was about to renounce its original promise, and become an Empire. One that, we told ourselves, would allow our previous Allies to return to once the new borders were secured, and peace with the UK was reestablished. Or so was the idea.
But would it work? Would we survive this radical transformation of our small nation? Wouldn’t one could argue that it was better to die, along our friends, than to stomp them without their consent on the shaky promise of a future reward? Who were we to make such promises, and then to keep them?
I can’t say when, how, or who in our now maddening Discord channel cast the dice. I can’t say what meme, what phrase, what image shifted the balance of our hive mind on this new direction.
All I know is that in our moment of reckoning, when hope seemed lost, when our bosses at the office were closest over our shoulders, and when the tower of the Big Ben seemed almost completed, a Shower of Green suddenly began to fall on the Mexico/UK border.
And the battle raged forward. Doubling its intensity.
In the minutes that followed, our community broke so many promises in our crazy pursuit of victory. But we also broke The Enemy’s will as it saw its Big Ben being swallowed in our colors. It was our darkest time. It was our brightest time. Whatever happened next, r/Mexico would never be the same.
For the invasion had stopped. Anyone who glances at the battlefield at this moment can tell you that the outline of this massive Mexican flag was all but certain. This moment also captures the fight on both sides as it neared its apex. Exhilaration, fear, rage, sadness. They are all preserved on these pixels as a frozen record of the last, demented moments of our small nation.
There wouldn’t be any more moments after this.
Because right here, right then, it all came to a stop.
It’s kinda funny to remember how The End of it All passed by our ranks without anyone noticing. As cursors all over the world got disabled without warning, as the placement of pixels got frozen in unison, stopping all activity forever, our Discord channel kept buzzing like a hive, or perhaps like a rogue chainsaw, for many more minutes after this final tick of the clock.
Users would refresh and reload their browsers, their phones, their scripts, trying to understand what glitch had just happened that left them unable to place more pixels on the Canvas. Meanwhile, bots on both sides kept humming, their ‘winning’ designs still loaded in their programs. Ready to fire one more pixel, in the building of a better place for their masters.
The realization, the weight of the news about The End of it All, came less like an explosion, and more like a cold wind. For it was a weight that had been suddenly lifted off our shoulders, allowing us to breathe once again. Yet leaving us feeling hollow, and unmoored.
Later would come the emotions. The hurrahs, the recriminations, the scorning, the cheers, and the sadness. For across the Canvas, across r/Place, people stared at the last pixel they had placed, and they mentally tried to rewind back time, in a vain attempt to undo their final choice. One they did not even knew at the time they were making.
For the Canvas was now frozen, forever. Locked in place for the world, the real world, to admire, to wonder, to awe.
Humans made this. Yes, lots of robots as well, but even those were tools made by humans, for human purposes, against human adversaries, and as part of a greater human tale. No pixel on the Canvas had been left untouched, no pixel had been left uncontested. Every part of the Canvas had its own story, its own people behind it, its own communities, stories, heroes and villains. It would take weeks for anyone to be even attempt to categorize it all. To recollect the legends, the wars, the friendships, the betrayals. A task I have no doubt, could continue for years, folding onto itself to near-infinite lengths.
For that is my purpose in writing this. In detailing, in my own limited, flawed, and incomplete way, just one of the stories on this Canvas.
The promise of just one of these places, the one I knew best, and yet, knew so little about.
A lost corner of the Canvas, a Federation of Cartoons, a battlefield frozen in time, a song whose rhythm is found in all mexican elementary history books. A place that meant something to us, and little to everyone else.
A home.
