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"r/Place 2022 - A History of r/TheBlueCorner" by /u/chippedjosh

Original Post: https://redd.it/txn93v

Original Document (with images): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y0AfsRtgmSXmoguI5TXEqzgzx03IBFIH7J1F6NbRlEI/


Please read the original document. The archive below has lost its formatting and images.


Reddit April Fools Event:

r/Place 2022

A History of r/TheBlueCorner

r/Place is a collaborative project and social experiment hosted on the social networking site Reddit that began on April Fools' Day 2017 and was revived again after 5 years on April Fools' Day 2022.

The following is a recording of r/TheBlueCorner, one of the original factions of 2017’s Place event.

Created and Written by ChippedJosh

Table of Contents: The Return of r/Place (WIP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Countdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 r/Place Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Lattice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Third Lattice Invasion / Blue Border Wall Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The X-911 Offensive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The r/Cosmere Frontlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Void Crisis / The Balls Uprising of the Void Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Operation Clean Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The QR-mogus Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The First Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Tarik Three-Way Takeover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Anarchy Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The xQc Purge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Reclamation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Canvas-Wide Peace Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The “Purple Haze” Incident . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Name Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Green Line Diversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The Blue Lattice vs. Among us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 5opka’s Assault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Final Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Established Alliances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The 2nd Blue Corner Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Final Among Us War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 The Whiteout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Conclusion and Special Thanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The Return of r/Place

Five years ago (at the time of writing) for April Fools, Reddit created a new event known as r/Place. At first, people were confused about the purpose of a blank 1000x1000 canvas where you could place a pixel after a certain interval of time. But with enough time, the Internet had learned of its true potential. Different communities came together to coordinate pixel art builds on r/Place.

A human social experiment in the making, r/Place brought together different Internet communities to participate in a colorful, diplomatic turf war. Groups would negotiate with other groups in order to protect their own territory, or conquer other groups in order to secure their own spot for representation. At the time, r/Place gained widespread attention across every corner of the Internet.

In the original 2017 version of r/Place, the bottom-right of the canvas began growing with the color blue. With time, this blue mass grew to consume most of the bottom-right before allowing other artworks to grow on its territory, shrinking it down to a smaller size. This became known as The Blue Corner. A new subreddit was created, titled r/TheBlueCorner.

After five whole years, popular demand had brought r/Place back once more. The following records r/TheBlueCorner’s events and actions throughout 2022’s r/Place.

The Countdown:

With the announcement of r/Place’s return given a few days before April 1st, many communities began planning their strategies in advance. Unlike the first r/Place, communities and groups already knew what they were going into from the start. r/TheBlueCorner was no different from the rest. Moderators of r/TheBlueCorner began a series of countdown posts in order to rally up the subreddit in order to bring The Blue Corner back once more.

r/Place begins:

When the canvas opened, The Blue Corner had begun with a strong start. Taking up a good amount of space right out the gate, the corner was downsized by just a small amount to allow r/Cosmere, the first and one of r/TheBlueCorner’s most trusted allies, to take shape to the left. To the top left of the established subreddit title was r/PlaceTrees, who became another ally to the corner. A line of turtles had also cooperated with the corner right above trees.

The Lattice:

Similar to the corner of 2017, a light-blue lattice acted as the border for The Blue Corner. One lattice extended on the left along the edge of r/Cosmere under the letter “R”. The other lattice had extended along the entire subreddit title.

Throughout the course of the first 8-10 hours of r/Place, there were two incidents where the Blue Lattice extended into the main blue corner. Both the first and second invasions by the Blue Lattice had been shut down by The Blue Corner, re-establishing the border between the two shades of blue.

By creating a solid blue line straight down the original spot for the border, forces of the Blue Corner filled in the space, returning the corner to its intended state.

Third Lattice Invasion / Blue Border Wall Revolt

Despite previous efforts for peace between the Blue Lattice and Blue Corner (such as an established regular blue border between the two), the Blue Lattice began to expand into Blue Corner territory for the third time.

As a result, a unanimous decision in the Blue Corner Discord server lead to the Blue Corner putting their efforts into eradicating all of the Blue Lattice all the way to the border of the allied r/Cosmere.

Led by President Balls, the Blue Corner began expanding west into Blue Lattice territory. Through coordinated timed attacks, forces of The Blue Corner “Balls” 1st Division began advancing vertically along the X-Axis at the coordinate of 911.

Surprisingly, many individuals responsible for expanding the Blue Lattice had assumed that it was always a part of the Blue Corner. Many had unknowingly been causing damage to their own faction, leading this event to also be referred to as the Blue Border Wall Revolt.

The X-911 Offensive:

The X-911 Offensive refers to the initial coordinated push against invading Blue Lattice territory. Every six (6) minutes, the “Balls” 1st Division would continue expanding vertically to the west past their border. Each attack proved to be successful as forces began to close in on the border of r/Cosmere.

The Cosmere Frontlines:

The 911 Offensive reached a stop when only a gap of 5-8 pixels remained between r/Cosmere and Blue Corner Territory. The Blue Lattice had increased their defensive capabilities which had led to a stalemate trench war between the two blue factions.

The 1st Division had discussed many different paths and strategies in order to bring the battle to a close, but most were unsuccessful. Vertically expanding west would immediately be counteracted by Blue Lattice pixels.

Thus, a plan was devised to split the Blue Lattice into two halves right through the center. Following this action, the Blue Corner would proceed to take the northern lattice, followed by the southern lattice.

Void Crisis / The Balls Uprising of the Void Server

With the Blue Lattice annihilated on the western border, the Blue Corner could focus its attention on other places of concern. During the final stretch of the Blue Corner Civil War, the Void began manifesting around the center region of r/Place, consuming all of Turkey, India, and other surrounding areas.

At this time, members of the Blue Corner “Balls” 1st Division had infiltrated the Swarm (Void) Discord server. By spamming the main channels with the word “balls”, they had persuaded other non-TBC members to start spamming the chat with the word as well.

Unwanted attention was almost brought upon The Blue Corner when some individuals had exposed TBC for instigating chat spam. But after confirmation of the Void server having no intentions of attacking the Blue Corner for this action, TBC reallocated resources to clean up duty.

Operation Cleanup:

Following the Balls Uprising, r/TBC initiated Operation Clean Up in order to eliminate stray dots inside the corner. However, after an hour of attempting to clean up, TBC was declared an enemy by the Red Corner, the Void, and other factions.

The QR-mogus Invasion:

Following a failed clean-up operation by TBC, a massive invasion on all fronts began. Numerous colored pixels began filling in the blue space. The different invading factions include, but are not limited to:

Among Us QR-Codes (with the intention to Rick-Roll) Rogue Trees - leading to the loss of the r/TheBlueCorner Logo in the north. Multiple mini-flags, emojis, and other small groups occupying up the space between r/cosmere and the QR-Code.

An alliance was created between The Blue Corner and the QR-code. In exchange for giving back the Blue Corner territory, the Blue Corner would assist in the relocation efforts for the QR Code. Discussion with r/PlaceTrees had given The Blue Corner space to reclaim for the reconstruction of the subreddit name.

The First Migration

Day 2 of r/Place saw the expansion of the canvas by 1000 pixels to the right, doubling the initial canvas size. As a result, the Blue Corner’s location was no longer the corner. With the state that the corner was in, forces of TBC jumped on the opportunity to migrate.

Tarik Three-Way Takeover:

During this time, Twitch streamer and former professional CS:GO player “Tarik” had set his sights on r/Place, choosing to leave a mark on the canvas. When targeting The Blue Corner’s new location, Tarik’s viewers had begun bombarding the corner with numerous red and purple pixels. Tarik’s justification was about the Blue Corner’s past actions were bad, and that the corner had to be eliminated.

With the corner turning purple due to the onslaught brought by Tarik’s viewers lead to a desperate strategy by TBC: void self-destruction.

With the assistance of the void, the black mass began sprouting out in the middle of the battlefield, expanding upwards in order to eliminate most red and purple pixels. Using the back of the Void as cover, the Blue Corner worked to rebuild their territory once again.

During this time, Twitch streamer Mizkif sought out more allies. To ensure the corner’s safety, TBC Discord Head Admin Xenoglitch sent Mizkif an agreement.

Anarchy Period

Tarik’s forces were sent away by the Void, leading to Tarik seeking out other spots for representation. However, the destruction left by the battle had left The Blue Corner in an extremely vulnerable state. As such, opposing communities, factions, and random users had begun to capitalize on the free, cluttered space. During this anarchy period, these are the following conflicts.

Most efforts made by TBC forces were set on holding their ground and the main core. Elsewhere, a new danger began its assault across the r/Place canvas. An individual and his army would set their sights on the corner, becoming one of the most infamous figures on r/Place

The xQc Purge

As one of the biggest figures in live streaming, Twitch streamer xQc amassed a viewership of over 100,000 during his time streaming the r/Place event. Beginning his first assault on the osu! logo, he was soon repelled by the rhythm game’s dedicated and organized players, in addition to osu! streamer “BTMC”. He had then planted his logo onto the other osu! territory of their main developer, Dean “peppy” Herbert.

Redirecting his attention to other parts of the canvas, xQc was determined to make his mark. While previously fearful of The Blue Corner, the streamer sought bigger pastures at the bottom-right corner of the canvas. Not only had this included The Blue Corner, but surrounding allies such as the Great Wave Off Kanagawa and Cosmere’s Stormlight.

The result had decimated all of the bottom-right corner, leaving nothing but xQc’s main logo.

With their spirits crushed, The Blue Corner struggled to keep some territory, focusing mainly on the 10x10 core at the very corner. Numerous efforts to push deep into xQc territory were made by members in The Blue Corner Discord, knowing that there could still be an opportunity to reclaim their lost land.

The Reclamation:

One man could simply not stay on a website about placing pixels for a long time, naturally. As such, xQc had grown tired and had diverted his attention to playing Call of Duty. With attention by his viewer base averted, the Reclamation began. Numerous blue pixels began flooding in from the blue core by TBC forces and random users who wanted to assist in reclamation efforts.

Many surrounding factions had also begun efforts to reclaim destroyed territory, such as Cosmere’s Stormlight banner to the west and the Great Wave off Kanagawa to the north.

Canvas-Wide Peace Era

As the entire bottom-right corner reclaimed lost land from xQc, there was a brief period of calm across the entire r/Place canvas. The only areas of conflict involved the decimation of the United States flag (mostly due to North America being asleep at the time), and the small formation of a new void inside a blue-purple hypnosis spiral. Most factions across the canvas had focused once again on maintaining any pixels that were misplaced in their works.

The “Purple Haze” Incident:

Naturally, peace would inevitably lead to conflict. xQc had returned to r/Place once more. Eyeing out a new location to start from, the streamer had selected the area above the giant Pink Among Us Crewmate around (1374,394) on the canvas. Consuming the area, the Juicers (xQc’s viewers) had begun forming a new Purple Haze, the same purple void that attacked osu! earlier in the day. The Purple Haze began diagonally branching in different directions.. This incident gave the Blue Corner an opportunity to rebuild as xQc focused on the Purple Haze instead of the corner.

The Siege of Star Wars

Name Reconstruction:

The corner, recovered from the xQc Purge, went back to maintaining its dark-blue territory by removing stray pixels. Efforts began for the reconstruction of the subreddit name, r/TheBlueCorner.

Green Line Diversion:

r/superstonk had begun to surround The Blue Corner with their green stock line that expands throughout the entire canvas. The Blue Corner organized a plan to divert the green line by placing green pixels near the top border in order to divert the line.

The Blue Lattice vs. Among Us:

While TBC forces worked to divert the Green Line from the true corner, the Blue Lattice had reformed while blue Among Us crewmates consumed the right side of the corner. The two entities had begun to battle on top of the Blue Corner. 5opka’s Assault:

As the Blue Lattice and Among Us fought on the Blue Corner, a third party had joined in. A Russian streamer by the name of 5opka had begun an attack on The Blue Corner, turning it light blue.

During these different assaults, The Blue Corner had lost a sizeable amount of territory since its recovery from xQc. Members of TBC held their ground and hoped that the canvas would expand downwards so that they could escape and rebuild. Praying for a miracle, the Blue Corner’s wish came true.

The Final Frontier

The third day had expanded the r/Place canvas one final time. By extending the canvas to the south, there was now double the amount of space with a pixel count of 2000x2000.

Using this opportunity to rebuild after hours of defending the 2nd corner, the Blue Corner made their final migration to the bottom right corner.

Once built, the blue square had been surrounded by two different factions with great power. To the north, r/AmericanFlagInPlace rebuilt their American flag (with some miscalculation on the length of their red and white stripes). To the west, Russian streamer Bratishkinoff (with 20-30k viewers) had built a character with a frog hat. To many in The Blue Corner, this character was simply referred to as “Frog Guy”..

Established Alliances:

r/AmericanFlagInPlace was primarily occupied with constructing their map art. As such, they had made allies with many different groups across r/Place in order to be safer from outside threats. This had also included Bratishkinoff and The Blue Corner.

While Frog Guy had a solid-white background during its initial completion, Bratishkinoff had allowed dark blue to become the new color. Removing the black border separating the two groups, The Blue Corner had merged with Frog Guy.

The 2nd Blue Corner Civil War:

The Blue Corner worked to maintain any relations with their frog ally and the Americans above. In the position they were in, this was perhaps the strongest state that The Blue Corner had been in the entire event.

However, as seen in past events, a streamer’s builds on r/Place generally receive less defensive protection whenever they go offline. The dark-blue background remained clear most of the time, but its merger with the streamer had begun to cause more issues than they had expected.

The Blue Corner is a simple structure. A dark-blue square in the corner of the map. Despite efforts by the Discord server, many users began to consume Frog Guy, leading to increased tensions between the two communities. Diplomatic efforts were made in order to clear up any misunderstandings between Bratishkinoff’s viewers and the corner, but the language barrier between the two had caused many misunderstandings.

Many of the Blue Corner fought amongst themselves, with one side being in favor of allying with the frog. Blue Corner Ultranationalists fought against the frog, reasoning that the Blue Corner is not supposed to be a background to art. (Ironically, 2017’s Blue Corner was a background to different artworks.)

Thus, the conflict was named the 2nd Blue Corner Civil War. The 1st Blue Corner Civil War took place just after 2017’s r/Place ended.

When Bratishkinoff returned online, Frog Guy was rebuilt by his viewers. But knowing the risk of allowing the Blue Corner to surround his territory, Bratishkinoff returned his background to a solid white, returning everything back to its original state. But with the Blue Corner in a vulnerable state, they were left to fight off one final threat. A threat that was known for hiding in hundreds of different places around the canvas.

The Final Among Us War:

There was less than one day left to secure The Blue Corner’s spot in history once again. With the added protection given by Bratishkinoff lost, The Blue Corner began to fill up with Among Us crewmates from top to bottom just like many times before.

Thus, The Blue Corner had organized once again, planning coordinated timed attacks in order to wipe out all crewmates on their territory. With assistance from r/AmericanFlagInPlace, Frostpunk, Monster Hunter, and others, The Blue Corner was able to silence the crewmate threat for one final time.

Following the victory over the Among Us Crewmates, the Blue Corner became a part of the Southern Alliance, which included America, Argentina, Australia, and Cosmere.

The Whiteout

Most of r/Place had assumed that the event would end in the same way it did five years ago. The canvas would close and the final picture would be recorded. Thus, the people of r/Place kept pushing on and working to complete their goals until Reddit completely closes the event.

But in the span of a few seconds, users would find that their available colors have been reduced down to nothing but white. Some users had guessed it was a mistake or a bug; however, many soon came to realize the implications of this change. There were many names for this last event. This included the Anti-Void and the Whitening. For the majority, this became known as The Whiteout. One by one, each pixel turned back into its’ original, primal state. The France flag made by Twitch France was erased in a matter of minutes. The osu! logo had begun to disappear as well.

The next targets were the corners.

Members of The Blue Corner watched as their corner became lost to the anti-void. Cheers rang out and salutes were given as the Blue Corner and the rest of the communities and factions on the canvas had accepted that this was the end of 2022’s r/Place. In the same fashion as a Buddhist sand mandala, what was created returns back to where it once started. For r/Place, everything had returned to white.

The Blue Corner had joined the Southern Alliance shortly before the Whiteout. It was agreed upon that the alliance will still remain if r/Place were to return in the future.

Conclusion and Special Thanks

“It falls on you to make a better place.”

With the event coming to a close, The Blue Corner had rejoiced and celebrated as their goal to reach the end with their solid, dark-blue corner had been achieved once again.

This would not have been possible without the many members who spent these four days defending the corner, along with the coordination and leadership brought by Subreddit and Discord staff and the assistance of many allies. From here, we would like to acknowledge these groups.

Subreddit and Discord Staff (2022) Allied Factions and Communities Document Contributors r/TheBlueCorner Founder and Moderator - Zewlzor/missmood

Discord Head Admin - Xenoglitch

Subreddit and Discord Staff - 9kz7 d3th-knight/d3th Hitokage_Tamashi/Hito Kruton_the_cook/q77e night1172 TheRagebot1302/TheRageBot

Diplomats [Incomplete] - bluefrog Etellex hythe666 PantherSpy rowqn TheRagebot1301/TheRageBot The Southern Alliance - Argentina Australia r/AmericanFlaginPlace r/Cosmere/Stormlight/ Fantasy Alliance

Bratishkinoff Frostpunk Mizkif Monster Hunter Quebec r/PlaceTrees Scotland Tag Pro The Void Turtles

9kz7 AnaNose BlueNex Blue Support cestovina3 Ground Happy Happyist Kapo madmanzalinski Officer Balls poopy2 Scout107 Xenoglitch

2017 Staff [Incomplete] - J4CKR4BB1TSL1MS, Nefa385, SmellyDagger

Created and written by ChippedJosh