This digital graffiti project is making the internet fun again, pixel by pixel – see for yourself

Screenshot by David Grober/ZDNET

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Wplace is a site that lets you paint one pixel anywhere in the world every 30 seconds.
• Even though it’s fairly new, it’s exploded in popularity.
• You’ll find artwork all over the world, warring groups, alliances, and more. 

If you miss Reddit’s annual r/place experiment — part collaborative project, part social experiment — there’s good news: It’s back. At least a form of it is back on a website called Wplace. Like r/place, Wplace lets you color in pixels on a large canvas to create an image. Only this time around, you’re coloring in a world map.

The site debuted just last month, but it’s exploding in popularity, and there’s now graffiti all over the world. A lot of the artwork centers around internet culture, but there’s a surprising amount of genuine artwork. Naturally, different fandoms have given rise to turf wars, alliances have formed to protect certain areas, and images appear in the most random of places.

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If you’re interested in joining the fun or just seeing what people are up to, here’s what to do. 

Getting started

Here’s how Wplace works. To join in, head to https://wplace.live

You’ll need to login with a Google or Twitch account to play. The site hosts a world map where you can zoom out, zoom in, and scroll. You have the ability to move the map anywhere in the world or click a button to go straight to your location. Every 30 seconds, you can color in one pixel that everyone else can see. Wplace says the entire map has more than 4 trillion pixels. 

If you want to make Wplace a group project, you can join a themed alliance or create your own alliance where you plan your artwork with others.

Mapping the world a pixel at a time 

When I popped into my specific neighborhood on the map, I had to zoom out quite a bit to even see any pixel art. The closest artwork, a Pokémon character, was about 15 miles away. As I scrolled around, I noticed more artwork. It was mostly animated characters, but I found a pretty cool representation of my local baseball team’s logo right on their stadium location. 

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As I scrolled to a major city near me, the map became packed with more characters, memes, team logos, and a little bit of unprintable language. It was fascinating to see the sometimes fairly elementary, sometimes very impressive artwork. As you might imagine, the map is constantly changing. If there’s a coordinated effort, artwork can pop up very quickly. 

Wplace has some limits

Wplace does have a few rules. You’re not allowed to paint over other artworks using random colors or patterns simply to mess things up, but you can paint over other artworks to complement them or create a new drawing.

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Additionally, you can’t create hate-group or adult content-related paintings, disclose anyone’s personal information, create with more than one account or use bots, or degrade political party flags or portraits of politicians (scrolling over a political hotbed like Washington, D.C., though, I’m not sure how strictly that latter rule is enforced). 

You don’t have to spend any money to join Wplace, but there are small microtransactions for more features.

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