I’ve been the main moderator of the same community since 2016. This evening, i approved my last comment.

I’m leaving for two reasons:

  1. Reddit went public a week ago. I didn’t volunteer to work for a publicly traded company, i volunteered to work for a community. As long as i live under capitalism i accept that my labor will generate value for shareholders, but damned if i ever do it for free. (this is not a Faulkner quote)

  2. April 1st is coming and i’m scared they might do another r/place. Doing in r/place 2022 and 2023 has left me dejected and bitter and i don’t want to feel obligated to participate again.

Leaving felt like ripping myself off of something warm i’ve been comfortably glued to for a long time. Still recommend it for anyone still giving Reddit shareholders free labor

EDIT: there are too many comments to respond to, but i’ve appreciated all of them! Thank you

    • janNatan@lemmy.ml
      66·
      7 months ago

      It’s like an MMO for pixel art. The best part of MMOs is all the other players. The worst part of MMOs is… all the other players.

    • WolfdadCigarette@threads.net@sh.itjust.works
      50·
      7 months ago

      The first time /r/place was offered was markedly different from the others. The first was a free-for-all hellfest for a long while where organization wasn’t even secondary or tertiary to the experience. Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up, obliterating any semblance of originality with an uninteresting mob of paint rollers. The second go around, there was nothing new, everything was pre-planned and strategically plotted, and genitals were a big no-no. To answer your question, novelty and the spontaneous lack thereof. Freedom and the spontaneous lack thereof.

      • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
        24·
        7 months ago

        Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up

        Ugh. The domination of the space by advertisements and just straight-up nationalism is so lame and nauseating. I don’t know if it’s mainly bots or just peoples’ general lack of creativity, but it sucks.

        • SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          12·
          7 months ago

          It’s like that Woodstock concert in the 2000s. You can’t just recapture magic like that by repetition.

          Spontaneity is spontaneous.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          My understanding is it’s mostly bots. Not bot accounts so much, but people running scripts using their main accounts. I’m not totally sure on this, but I’m pretty confident I read about scripts communities used for their drawings.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      23·
      7 months ago

      The first r/place was one of those unique events in history. The later ones didn’t work because people now knew what it was, techniques to use, and of course bots. I think the most enjoyable was how it not only sparked comradery within various subreddits to support their design and keep it alive, it also brought together some “opponents” to do the same (thinking my experience with the Star Citizen/Elite Dangerous agreement to help each other).

      • thawed_caveman@lemmy.worldOP
        142·
        7 months ago

        Also streamers were a lot more influential on place 22 and 23 than they were in 17. Streamers are external to the website, don’t particularly have a dog in the race other than themselves, are encouraged to create spectacle, and the kind of personality that makes you a big streamer is not conducive to being a good neighbor in a competitive pixel art game. So while i hesitate to say that there was anything about Reddit in particular that made Place 2017 a good event, i do think the presence of streamers made 22 and 23 much worse.