Honestly i’m sure this is the best thing that could happen for the reddit execs in terms of user engagement. Writing “fuck spez” on reddit is like shouting “save the planet” from a cruise ship.
i had this question a couple of days ago and today fell totally down the fuck spez rabbithole.
found myself on the main discord where the coordinators were talking to uruguay about doing the "u" after columbia (?) declined. guess hearing that, both uruguay and equador wanted in.
there was discussion of not stepping over the swiss flag in one of the letter because they were part of the coalition.
these folks are dedicated - many commented they hadn't really slept since it went live. kudos to all of them for the passion they showed today.
tbh it was impressive and one of the best executed operations i've seen in a long time. very fun to see up close.
working for a global multinational company i only wish we were this efficient internally ❤️
There was clearly a large bot net which started stencilling the outlines of the letters, but then it was magic, everybody understood the assignment. The letters filled out in a handful of minutes. Then, then the whiteout slowed - the apes (mostly) agreed the job was done. It took another half an hour or so for the white fog to finally take hold.
Eh, I think this can work like sponsored messages on YouTube videos: probably not immediately a lot of clicks on the product but over time more and more people recognize it and know what it is. And I like to think that over time Spez will be recognized as the soulless fucker who is hated by the very community he is trying to sell. Reddit lost a lot of charm in the last couple of months, even more than was already lost before and his name is tied to the whole thing. I hope!
They also screwed themselves over by playing the r/place trump card so soon after the last iteration in 2022. Rather than doing it to create a cool event to experience once every few years, they did it to drive engagement on Reddit. That's made people lose interest and even if it's another 5 years before the next one, many of them won't come back. It's a self-acknowledgement that the peak reddit era is finished and wouldn't have happened without the prior backlash against their enshittification. It's the type of thing that sets up the conditions for a death spiral, because they've resorted to tricks to get people to use the site and eventually they'll run out of tricks.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Thanks for everybody helping us. Glad to be a a part of it. For those who don't know. Lemmy got a nice banner at the center of the map. We also took part of the Fuck Spez project.
I wonder what the federated version of r/place would look like. It should not be too hard to create a collaborative pixel board and accept input from anywhere in the fediverse. But we would need to come up with some cool fedi spin. A chessboard, maybe, where every server has a square?
In the future, when the fediverse is more mature, it would be cool to create something.
There is no way the fediverse can reimplement r/place feature by feature. A federated Place would have to be different. It could be a month long project ora even permanent one, probably with a slower update rate.
I like the idea of people seeing different things depending on the server they use and who that server federates with or blocks (https://lemmy.world/comment/1749093).
But maybe the fediverse should look for its own thing rather than try to imitate.
The way the Lemmy version of r/place would look like would depend on which other servers your server is federated with. It's a very postmodern approach where there is no single view of the thing for everyone
I can only imagine transitioning from the 2022 whiteout to the 2023 start, and then if r/place happens in 2024, transition from the 2023 whiteout to that.
Man they really showed Spez who is boss by contributing to all the engagement KPIs they’re going to use to position the opening valuation of the IPO. Truly the most epic prank of all!
At least it ruins their ability to advertise with r/place like they wanted to. At this point, making as much of reddit as useless as possible is the last way to make them listen