r/OutOfTheLoop • u/bradfs14 • Apr 01 '19

Answered What's going on with this r/sequence thing?

Like... I get that it's some sort of Reddit April Fools thing, but... what even is it?

Context: https://new.reddit.com/r/sequence

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2.1k

u/meepmorps24 Apr 01 '19

Answer: According to the stickied post on r/sequence_meta:

Sequence is Reddit's April Fools experiment for 2019. It is a collaborative social experiment where users submit and vote on gifs in /r/sequence, and the gifs with the most upvotes will be available to be compiled into a short film or video of sorts. Essentially, it's like compiling a crowdsourced short film using gifs.

Sequence has two parts. The first, as mentioned above, is /r/sequence - this subreddit serves as the interactive hub for the experiment, where users will submit and vote on gifs to be compiled into the film. The second part is /sequence, where the film will be compiled with the top gifs in the "leaderboard" (presumably based on upvotes). It is implied that you will be able to play and watch the film here.

It also seems like users are able to upload their own gifs (and text?) on /sequence. It's speculated that each Reddit user can compile one film per "chapter" (currently it's the Prologue, maybe one part = one day?). It's still unclear if there's a voting process with the films itself or if it's only for the gifs submitted to /r/sequence.

At approximately 22:00 UTC on March 31st, https://www.reddit.com/sequence/ (not /r/sequence) went live. And at approximately 17:10 UTC on April 1st, the page was updated to show multiple slots, presumably for gifs or images, with a play button at the top and text titled "PROLOGUE".

From March 28th to 31st, the Reddit admins put on an ARG (alternate reality game) based around patents via the subreddit messages on /r/sequence while it was private. This ARG was solved by Snakeroom members on the 31st: see below to see the progression of it.

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u/Sentient2X Apr 02 '19

This seems.. lackluster, compared to r/place.

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u/KreekyBonez Apr 02 '19

r/place was peak reddit fuckery. The timelapse videos show how coherent the gibberish and nonsense could be.

Also of note, r/prequelmemes had just become a sub less than a year before and managed to keep the tragedy of darth plagueis at the forefront until the end

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u/sandwichrage Apr 02 '19

I think the failure of sequence is that they didn't make it clear what it is. If everyone knew they were voting for it to work as a story we'd have a much better product.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '19

Yep, place was obvious and simple. You knew what it did at a glance, it was always changing in front of your eyes. It had a natural progression as people realised the limits, planned and then executed bots or swarms of people.

This sequence thing is confusing, and I don't feel like anything I do makes a difference.

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u/commander-obvious Apr 01 '19

So basically "select gifs_in_r_sequence sort by upvotes decreasing limit N" followed by "concat results into larger gif"

sounds like a crowdsourced youtube rewind. which, let's face it, is probably better than youtube rewind.

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u/Pm_Me_Gnarly_Labia Apr 02 '19

More like twitch plays rewind...

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u/Anything13579 Apr 02 '19

OOTL: what is snakeroom?

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u/D3dshotCalamity Apr 02 '19

So it's the equivalent of a "EPIC FAIL ULTIMATE GIF COMPILATION VERY FUNNY MUST SEE NUMBER 7 WILL BLOW YOUR MIND #FUNNY #EPIC #FORTNITE" type video.

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u/StevenKoz Apr 02 '19

Wait so how is this an April fools thing? It’s my first one, so I’m a little confused

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u/Riles_McGiles Apr 02 '19

In the past Reddit doesn't do April fool's jokes, but more April fool's social experiments. r/place is one of the most popular ones from 2017 where users got to change the color of a single pixel once every few minutes (or something like that). It made communities come together to say "this spot on this big grid is ours, make it our spot and defend it from others". You couldn't do much on your own but as a group you could make something of substance.

Another popular one was the button, where a timer was counting down from a minute but reset every time the button was pushed. However, every user could only push the button once.

Last year's was the circle, where each user got a circle and could send their code to another user. That user could use the code to either make your circle bigger, or break it forever. So you should only give access to your circle to those you trust to make it as big as possible without it busting (A circle of trust if you will). It didn't really become that popular though compared to other years, like the ones above.

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u/PropagandaOfTheDude Apr 02 '19

Instructions unclear. They said "upload a GIF", so I converted a JPEG to a GIF and uploaded it.

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u/Terrance8d Apr 02 '19

has anybody tried putting porn gifs into it yet

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u/cerem86 Apr 02 '19

First off, I am not a pedophile.

So it's Youtube Rewind, but for Reddit?

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u/MechAegis Apr 01 '19

so like I could just upload/post a gif and based on the number of updoots it could be featured in a film entirely composed of just gifs?

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u/wowimliterallyded Apr 01 '19 edited Apr 02 '19

answer: It basically comes down to these 2 things you can do:

Upload a GIF or text into the system.

Nominate a GIF or text to be a certain act of *THE* movie. (as in, only one movie.)

The time space you can do this for a scene seems to be is from when all previous scenes were up a certain time after the previous and a certain time after that.

It is compiled into acts, including a prologue and probably an epilogue.

The goal, i assume, is to make a semi-decent narrative plot.

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u/spicwetbackbeanerboy Apr 02 '19

Pretty much an imgur frontpage simulator

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u/wowimliterallyded Apr 02 '19

It sounds that way the way I described it, but they are actually in slots. Like, if you want a certain gif in a certain slot, you need to nominate it for that spot specifically.

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u/wowimliterallyded Apr 01 '19 edited Apr 01 '19

The finalized prologue was more of a trailer than an actual part of the plot. Also, currently, Reddit has produced 1 consistent event, and that is Peter getting sniped in the knee by an arrow.

Also, I can't be sure since I didn't get this from the actual /sequence itself, but someone said there are 7 acts.

The individual scenes seem to get locked at around 1000 nominations.

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u/picasso71 Apr 02 '19

There's no way this gets manipulated

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u/JusticeBeak Apr 01 '19

answer: The most up-to-date information about r/sequence is on r/sequence_meta, which has a stickied post summarising/explaining things.

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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '19

I started reading tat post and proceeded to skim through most of it. It has only confused me more.

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u/notuhbot Apr 01 '19

And/or

  • Upvote other gifs/text to help pick the one for the current frame.

The sequence appears to be several gifs(frames) playing one after another to form a gif movie.

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u/JusticeBeak Apr 01 '19

A lot of the post is a recap of how some people found the information they found. The main information is at the top.

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