
Over the April Fool’s weekend, Reddit, the (in)famous social-media and troll-hangout site, tried something very unusual: they created a blank 1000-by-1000-pixel canvas, and turned their users loose on it to draw whatever they liked. The only restriction was a limit on how quickly any one user could update the image: just 1 pixel every 5 minutes. The resulting time-lapse animation is quite breathtaking to watch <https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/in-memoriam-reddits-72-hour-live-graffiti-wall-as-a-social-experiment/>. Look at the number of logos and national flags: a battle between the French and German flags gets resolved with the French one running its bars vertically, the German one horizontally, and an EU flag placed at the intersection; another brief skirmish between the Greek and Turkish flags gets resolved with them being placed side by side, joined by a heart. Yes, there are the occasional rude words. But it’s surprising how little of that kind of thing appears--or perhaps it was removed too quickly by competing groups with other fish to fry. Watch the animations a few times; you’ll see something new each time.