Since 1er April, the social network Reddit offers its millions of members the opportunity to draw a fresco made up of pixels. What was initially just an initiative like any other turned into a pitched battle between the French, the Spaniards and the Americans. Objective of this Pixel War » : draw clearly identifiable works and ensure that they are not erased. Only one rule: a pixel is personal, and its display lasts only five minutes.
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” The Million Dollar Homepage. This is the name given in 2005 to a web page made up of one million pixels. Participatory was still in its infancy, and an English student had the idea of selling each pixel of this page for a dollar; it was essentially a question of attracting advertisers, who could thus “engrave” their logo on this page intended to remain online. At the time, this page had become a real phenomenon, to the point that some pixel had been sold at auction and the student had exceeded one million dollars in revenue!
Seventeen years later, pixels are at the heart of a war, and the “territory” to be conquered has been made available by the social network Reddit the day of 1er April in the group r/Place. This is again a huge blank page. The goal is to create drawings every five minutes, and a user can color a pixel (or drop a tile) for five minutes. It’s free, purely artistic and ephemeral. Reddit thought it would only affect his community with a collective fresco in the end.
The biggest influencers arrive
Except that this ” Pixel War has taken on unprecedented proportions because stars of Twitch and other social networks like Kameto and Zerator recruited their communities to take over this one million, then four million pixel canvas. The goal: to create objects or symbolic elements of his country, or his community, but also portraits, famous people or even reproductions of works of art. Americans have thus drawn the logo of their university, while French people have managed to draw an Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame of Paris or a bottle of wine.
Unsurprisingly, a huge Ukrainian flag appeared, and we also saw the Formula 1 or NBA logo appear, and even our dear Carte Vitale. What was just a little joke of 1er April really took off on Sunday with hundreds of thousands of Internet users glued to their screens. As a result, the experiment plays overtime, and it should last until Monday 4:00 p.m., and then we will discover the final fresco.
The Presidential is invited
If the experience lasts longer than expected, it is also because it has become a real “war” with space occupation strategies, and the recruitment of “soldiers” digital, coordinated to hit the page at the same time. Above all, it is necessary to maintain certain drawings, considered as works of art. Some French people have therefore stayed up all night on the web to compensate for the time difference and thus prevent American or Asian communities from coming to erase certain creations.
The good news is that no famous brand has invested the space to place their logo or slogan. On the other hand, a presidential candidate in France unfortunately took advantage of this friendly and peaceful struggle to recover. This is Eric Zemmour : “ Congratulations to our French Internet users who defend our beautiful tricolor flag on Reddit! France needs you, the Reconquest is also done on Reddit. Needless to say, his message and his initiative were coldly received by the belligerents.
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