Operation R/Place

Operation R/Place was a collaborative project amongst the Foxhole Community to create a mural dedicated to Foxhole on Reddit's second r/place, which lasted from April 1st 2022 to April 4th 2022. The project was coordinated through a Discord server created by [27th]gamechfo, with many people help lead when others were away.

***This is an article of an ongoing event, initial reports may be incorrect, please update as the event progresses.***

*All denoted time is in UTC*

### Progress

#### Day 1

In the initial hours when the canvas opened (1300), with work beginning at (704, 535 as the top left corner. The project began creating the voted on pixel art, a black rectangle with "Foxhole" written at the top, a simplified Steam Banner, Post-Entrenched 37 Hex World Conquest map with iconic North-South conflict, with Abanondoned Ward and Saltbrook Channel as neutral towns, Jade Cove nuked, and the two faction logos on both bottom corners. The coordinates were coordinated through concise call-outs through the VC on the project's Discord, as well as a shared Microsoft Excel (.xslx) document created by Alephnull. Given the black border, there was fear that in the chaos of the internet, people would confuse it to be "the void", where people work together to randomly place black tiles. To show that it was an organized effort, the project began construction of "Foxhole", with plans to make everything else in relation to it later. After the "F" and "O" were completed, it was mentioned that it could be confused with "Fortnite", especially given the light gray color of the letters. Construction of the "X" was rushed and soon, the entire word was finished. Over time, the banner was finished and the hexagonal regions were slowly added. Sometime during the construction of the northern hexes, Arsenal Football Club created a "COYG" above the project's area, diplomatic ties with the club to ensure safety for both parties. The art was completed at During this entire time, a massive Ukrainian flag has been made at the upper area of the canvas, stretching the entire width of the canvas, causing fear and panic that once the large flag was finished, the smaller Ukrainian flag to the left of the project would expand and erase all the progress. Inevitably, the smaller Ukrainain flag expanded and began encroaching the "Foxhole" at about 2 pixels a minute. The leader at the time called on all the participating members to "QRF"(Reference to Foxhole gameplay) any yellow pixels in the black immediately (14XX), and guide the Ukrainian flag between Arsenal and Foxhole. The general consensus was also to not place any pixels outside the projects marked black border, as that might be misinterpreted as expansion and therefore a threat. The Ukrainian flag began to lose momentum as they were rebuilding their backlines, having been encroached upon by Rainbow Road and a United Kingdom flag. Eventually, all work on the Ukrainian flag ceased, and the Foxhole group finished the art some time between 1500 and 1600. A diplomatic mission between Arsenal and Foxhole agreed to fill the gap between and help each other counter attacks until the closing of the canvas. The agreed upon filler in the gap was "ARSEHOLE", a humourous portmanteau between the names of the two groups. At 1600, multiple allies with other surrounding communities have been made, including from r/babymetal, r/osuplace, r/rust, r/gunners (Arsenal) r/pitt r/touhou and many others (and with r/spacex before they gave up).

Multiple members continued to out-work random intervention and assorted attacks continuously until...

##### r/wallstreetbets Attack

At 16:30, WallStreetBets, or WSB, attacked Foxhole and allies' murals, and this continued on, with successful repulsion of each wave. Furthermore, WSB users created bots to harrass the project, with the first bot-placed pixels starting 19:30. After brief conflict, WSB and Foxhole came to a truce. However after becoming suspicious of WSB members the truce was broken and all out war was declared which ended in the quick and utter destruction of the entire WSB art piece. After the destruction of WSB the top half of the space was claimed by r/babymetal and they completed their artwork, while a whole bunch of smaller art pieces inhabit the bottom half.

#### Day 2

##### United Factions

At XXXX, many members of Operation r/place joined the (U.F.P.) United Factions of r/place's Discord.

##### Expanded Canvas (2x)

At 1625, Reddit added more colors and doubled the size of the canvas, immediately spawning more voids, blue corners, rainbow roads and many country flags, appearing similar to the beginning hours of the first day. This news was well accepted to the members online at the time, as it took attention of randoms and attackers away from the Foxhole art and allowed for attempts of expansion or other art pieces. Soon after, active members decided on placing small art piece at the lower-right side of the new half. The decided upon item to depict was an "angryping" emoji commonly found on Discord servers. Logi heart was made at

##### Spiffing Brit

In his stream, "The Tea Tier List + Spiff Reviews Terrible Tea" Spiff decides to remove Arsenal, a long-time ally to Foxhole, and replace it with Yorkshire Tea, for he believes it is a better representation of the U.K. on the "global stage". While there was declaration against Arsenal, Spiff also exclusively stated to leave Foxhole alone, as he has played it before on a private server with other Youtubers and it is a "very nice" game with "very friendly" devs. After a successful response by UFP and Foxhole, Spiff and viewers moved to another part of the canvas to create their Yorkshire Tea mural.

##### Expanded Canvas (4x)

On 1900, Reddit once again doubled the doubled canvas, making it four times the original size.

##### Shard 2

The project created a new piece of Foxhole art in the newly added area, with the top left corner located at (536, 1522). The depicted was Foxhole (Stylized as FOXHOLE) written at the top, the running soldier in the foreground on the left side of the Steam banner, and r/foxholegame written at the bottom, all in grayscale. Repeated Among Us invasions were all squashed before it could get out of hand.

#### Day 3

##### xQc Attack

Around 0620 on Monday, a large streamer who goes by xQc and his viewers rapidly erased all previous progress, with the raid largely centralized around the Foxhole piece, some intrusions were made into Arsenal, but by far the majority of the destruction and continued harrassment was upon Foxhole.

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxjL46HpaCsTu6Y8E-j8AdNeDYjKMrVtHK
2. ↑ https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1445938173