New York (AP) – One new The corner of the internet, Users are invited to “draw the world.” And the paintings they have. Welcome to wplace – A gaming global map that continues to evolve It is filled with drawings made of canvas of over 4 trillion pixels.
Images of Icelandic singer Laufei While floating above Reykjavik, praises for the late Tejanosinger Serena Quintanira Surround Corpus Christi, Texas. The emblem of San Lorenzo Other soccer clubs fill Buenos Aires. “Squid Game” Fan art is located on the outskirts of Seoul. From Walter White’s opening monologue “Breaking Bad” Sitting near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
WPlace was released on July 21st, but the artwork is already overwhelming. From simple stick figures and thin letter words, highly detailed images with colorful fan art are constructed with online kanas.
“It’s wild, chaotic and crude,” said Yotam Ophir, a professor at the University of Buffalo, in communications, including research that includes analysis of digital spaces. It’s part of WPlace’s appeal, he adds, explaining the site is like a “rebellion” over what the internet has become.
“I’m not going to beat Facebook,” he said. “But it’s like a reminder that things can be done differently.”
WPlace has gained more than 10.6 million users worldwide as of Thursday, co-founder Watanabe Enzo told The Associated Press. The explosion took just a month and created a challenge of moderation. Watanabe said in an email that the project’s growth “exceeded all expectations,” but admitted that “adapt to high demand is difficult.”
The game was developed by one person for three months in Brazil and operated by 46 teams in addition to volunteers, he said.
Art comes back to life, one pixel at a time
New users start with a small number of pixels and become available every 30 seconds. The more you contribute, the more pixels you will be available. In video games, said Moira Hembns, a 19-year-old user from Edmonton, Alberta.
Even with a larger pool of pixels, it can take a lot of time to bring the map painting to life. “Every piece of art takes hours to pre-design,” Hembns said. One of the paintings she recently finished A Pokemon named Leafeon In her hometown, it took two days to design outside of WPlace. And then they built it on another day, she said.
But Hembns points out that she loves art, checks the maps and places pixels almost every morning. Likewise, 21-year-old Muhammad Aliy Fatta Bin Yuslizal from Malaysia said WPlace has become an outlet for his creativity.
The site is “one of the places I can express myself,” Fatta said.
Users from around the world are also working together to bring about bigger projects, such as The Neighborhood, located on the corner of Yuma County, Arizona. Real-life resident Christa Rider, 25, began by drawing two houses. Currently, there are over 50 connected by paths, grass and river patches.
“I wanted to do something great that could lift people up and give them something that feels like they’re contributing, whether it’s big or small,” Rider said.
Identity and protest through art
Much of WPlace’s space is filled with an infinite array of pop culture references. It is often intertwined with symbols of local and national identity, protest and other reflection in everyday life found all over the world. In his own time scrolling through the maps of Wplace, Ophir points out that he has seen everything from small towns that emphasize the restaurants they love, to respect for local musicians, to broader images of political tensions and global conflict.
“In a way, everyone is zooming in on what reflects them and who they are,” Ophiel said.
On Gaza, users draw a message of solidarity with the Palestinian flag Israel’s ongoing war. The image of war can also be seen at the border Between Russia and Ukraine – Some people use pixels to draw military tanks and planes, while others write messages of peace. Washington, DC is covered in political messages, many of which focus on President Donald Trump.
Carly Kokulek, Associate Dean of Lewis University of Science and Letters at Illinois Institute of Technology and director of the school’s Game Design Program, says it has a long history of “digital spaces as places of protest.”
She said that expressive desire is part of the reason people are looking at (in WPLACE).
The rise of the challenge of moderation
Unfiltered chaos is definitely a lot of the points of WPlace’s interactive maps, but this site outlines general rules except that inappropriate content, bots, other people’s personal information disclosure, or other art “smash things down using random colors and patterns.” WPlace says it has a system that erases drawings that go against the rules and a report button to flag serious cases.
However, users of the online discussion thread dedicated to WPlace complain Such a moderation It highlights special concerns about hate speech and doxing, so it is not forced or addressed in a timely manner.
“The amount of moderators they have right now is really not enough for the number of people on the site,” says Aaron Hickerson, a 35-year-old German user. “It leaves the system they overwhelmed.”
Some say the same user has seen their work being destroyed or “sad” in video game terms. Others point to map art that includes racist words and images, sexually explicit content, destroyed pride flags and Nazi symbols. In response, users created collective callouts to hide such content.
WPlace aims to “keep improvements” in addition to looking for technologies that help server performance and provide more security features.
“The challenge is huge, but we are doing our best,” Watanabe said.
Some users have simply become accustomed to hidden art over time. Boston college student Emily Northlip recently Superhero characters are invincible. When she returned a few days later, someone else was drawing the student on his goggles.
However, Northlip found the addition interesting. WPlace is a “public server,” she said. “If someone wants to draw something on your pixels, they can.”
What’s next for WPlace?
Jessa Ringel, an associate professor of communication at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that people gather together to maintain a community space Like Wikipedia Or even our own archives. Still, that requires a lot of work. And she points out, “Unfortunately, the long arc of internet history does not bending towards self-regulation or responsibility.”
There is a question of whether WPlace should continue to accept new submissions forever, with the resources needed to meet the demand for eruptions.
“I definitely don’t want to stay forever because if it does, I think it’s going to fall apart,” Hems said. WPlace is probably taking snapshots that capture previous maps, or, like its predecessor, Reddit’s now-retired R/Location, it will pause future contributions later and pause future contributions.
Watanabe said Thursday that AP Place “continues to welcome new contributions” and, as well as the host’s platform event, “welcome new contributions.”
Regardless of WPlace’s future, experts like Lingel hope that pockets of artistic collaboration will continue to emerge online.
“Some of them last longer than others, while others create splashes. Others are quietly used in a little tiny corner of the internet that most people don’t know,” she says. “It’s a matter of who noticed them.”
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Luna reported from Los Angeles.
