a big to-do

June 27, 2024 10:51 AM

there are one million checkboxes, and checking a box checks it for everyone [via rockpapershotgun]
posted by ordinary_magnet (50 comments total)

oh hey they made a game out of my job
posted by mittens at 10:58 AM on June 27 [25 favorites]

That is shockingly unsatisfying. :)
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:07 AM on June 27 [8 favorites]

I scrolled to an empty spot and checked enough boxes to spell 'free Palestine ', lmk if you find it
posted by entropone at 11:08 AM on June 27 [3 favorites]

Interesting. At first it seemed like someone was always unchecking my checked boxes, which was unsatisfying and frustrating, but the overall count of checked boxes is increasing. So more people are checking than unchecking, which feels natural, somehow. Maybe if they started off all checked we would all be trying to uncheck them. Like, the community goal is to reverse the state of the system instead of trying to preserve the state. I feel like it's a psychological reflection, but just out of my reach.
posted by Illusory contour at 11:15 AM on June 27 [4 favorites]

my magnum opus arriveth, plebs.
posted by lalochezia at 11:21 AM on June 27 [6 favorites]

I only have been checking the colored ones. I'm having a hard time squaring that with my belief that one has a moral obligation to take a handful or scoop of trail mix and eat/throw out whatever you get instead of just picking out the "good stuff".
posted by aubilenon at 11:25 AM on June 27 [3 favorites]

Hey, if the moral universe wanted me to eat all the trail mix, they wouldn't have put raisins in it.
posted by box at 11:28 AM on June 27 [5 favorites]

I think the coloured boxes are ones people have searched for.

24601 - checked
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:36 AM on June 27

I believe they have invented the Torment Ne✔us as described in the classic Sci-Fi novel "Don't Invent the Torment Ne✔us"
posted by chavenet at 11:45 AM on June 27 [2 favorites]

The Hacker News wave (where it was first posted) had it up to 990,000 midday yesterday but the chaos agents of team uncheck were too wily.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:53 AM on June 27

It's weird that I get nostalgic when I see Zalgo text now.
posted by penduluum at 11:53 AM on June 27 [7 favorites]

Quite impressive Zalgo, this one.
posted by tclark at 11:58 AM on June 27 [2 favorites]

Looking at it is like watching one of those 1960s sci-fi shows where there would be banks and banks of blinky lights that were supposed to be "computers".
posted by briank at 12:14 PM on June 27 [4 favorites]

This is what my anxiety needed. Work is so complex and abstract these days. It is so hard to know if you are making progress towards anything, or if things are going to work out the way you want. My brain feels happy doing something that requires some attention (but not much), a little bit of coordination with others, and the satisfaction of seeing immediate results.
posted by Probabilitics at 12:30 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]

Immediate results? It feels like clicking into the void to me.
posted by aubilenon at 12:35 PM on June 27 [1 favorite]

this is activating some really dark parts of my psyche in that if I had a magic button to throw all the intentional uncheckers into an oubliette I'm not sure I wouldn't push it while screaming "YOU ARE WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS"

yes I realize this is hella problematic
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:47 PM on June 27 [7 favorites]

ok I did just head down to a more stable section where someone had unchecked a little heart shape so now I feel better about humanity again
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:52 PM on June 27 [3 favorites]

You have checked 554 (3121) boxes

What are the numbers in parentheses?
posted by Reverend John at 12:56 PM on June 27

If you use scripting to check a bunch of boxes very quickly you get a popup that says "CHILL LOL"
posted by axiom at 1:13 PM on June 27 [5 favorites]

The numbers in parentheses indicate the colored check boxes you have checked (color of the digit represents the color of the check box).
posted by fikri at 1:14 PM on June 27 [1 favorite]

And a negative on the colour means you unchecked the colour box. And they add together.
posted by Mitheral at 1:38 PM on June 27

You have checked 0 boxes
[0]
posted by HearHere at 1:59 PM on June 27

is this a metaphor for the futility of our fight against climate change?
posted by ourobouros at 2:32 PM on June 27 [4 favorites]

In reality, this is us powering some stupid "AI" feature somewhere.
posted by maxwelton at 2:42 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]

I was all excited until I realized that unchecking also unchecked for everyone.
posted by achrise at 2:43 PM on June 27 [1 favorite]

on the one hand this is really addictive but on the other hand it’s so annoying cause it feels like every time i clear a field of check marks people immediately show up to put them back in
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:20 PM on June 27 [3 favorites]

on the one hand this is really addictive but on the other hand it’s so annoying cause it feels like every time i clear a field of check marks people immediately show up to put them back in

RIGHT INTO THE OUBLIETTE istg
posted by taquito sunrise at 3:28 PM on June 27 [10 favorites]

the total checked is dropping rapidly since I started watching.
posted by ApathyGirl at 3:31 PM on June 27

oh hey they made a game out of my job
It's the actual Game of Life.
posted by pracowity at 3:34 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]

Go Team Uncheck!
posted by 3.2.3 at 5:13 PM on June 27

I enjoyed going to location 271828 and making an "e", then 314159 and making a "π". But then I realized that they won't look like that for anyone else unless they have the same screen resolution as I do.
posted by biogeo at 5:34 PM on June 27 [1 favorite]

Then I just amused myself by doodling Game of Life walkers for a little bit.
posted by biogeo at 5:36 PM on June 27

The "Jump" feature would be more useful if you could see what index you're looking at now.

Also, as biogeo points out, patterns only hold for a particular screen layout. Some of the diagonal stripey patterns you / I have seen probably make sense on someone else's screen. You can even zoom in/out on the page to change / ruin everything.

Without a common point of view, collaboration becomes really unlikely. It's almost the opposite of the internet; everyone is working on a project that will almost certainly never be seen or appreciated, but which can be vandalized.
posted by Western Infidels at 5:44 PM on June 27 [3 favorites]

You can see my masterpiece at offset 595750 -- or can you?
posted by Western Infidels at 5:47 PM on June 27 [5 favorites]

everyone is working on a project that will almost certainly never be seen or appreciated

Ah yes, like a Ph.D. dissertation.
posted by biogeo at 6:00 PM on June 27 [3 favorites]

This feels like what they were doing in Severance.
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:23 PM on June 27 [2 favorites]

IT Support perspective: Incidents of the category "I selected this checkbox specially - why has the system now deselected it?" are very common. They arise because of a fearsome alliance between users who are resolutely sure they did something when they did not, and developers who are happy to negate a user action because they think it should never have happened.
posted by rongorongo at 11:39 PM on June 27

I feel like there's a metaphor here. I thought the side of check boxing was winning, but it seems that the uncheckers have encroached and are winning.
posted by ellerhodes at 7:52 AM on June 28

i dont know what happened but just now it was at around 550K and it shot up to 996k. and now everyone is frantically trying to fill all the blanks!

edit: it dropped down to 900K, something is screwy with the server
posted by numaner at 9:07 AM on June 28

I checked about 30 boxes and then noticed the total number of boxes checked was going down really fast, which caused me so much anger and despair that I closed the tab. For some reason I had a sudden flashback to the last time I stood in line to vote in the extremely red state I live in. But it's probably not related.
posted by birthday cake at 9:15 AM on June 28 [2 favorites]

I enjoyed making a shape out of checked-off checkboxes, waiting for someone to uncheck a box, and then re-checking it to protect the sanctity of the shape. Do this often and aggressively enough and you'll trigger that instinct in people (and cats) that compels them to knock over a thing just because they can, and then the war is on.
posted by chrominance at 9:26 AM on June 28 [3 favorites]

I found somebody diligently trying to make a swastika and undid it for them.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:36 AM on June 28 [1 favorite]

then I joined the ranks on the side of keeping "HI" and fought valiantly against the opposing army of evil "HI" un-un-checkers. Now I'm retired. I go to the parades every year wearing my old uniform, honking away mindlessly on a bugle, and drooling into my shirtfront. But somewhere deep inside I remember... I remember the struggle.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:46 AM on June 28

Mindless erasers destroy any attempt at cooperation or creativity. Chaos is the best you can hope for in there.
posted by Ansible at 11:08 AM on June 28

I want to work together to uncheck them all. Who's in? I think the difficulty here is that if there is more than on person "unchecking" the same box, we will re-check it, but with persistence, we can do it.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:45 AM on June 28

Ah, nevermind, there are clearly some scripts running to keep some patterns in place.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:49 AM on June 28 [1 favorite]

Ah yes, like a Ph.D. dissertation
*begins crafting dissertation proposal on this*
posted by HearHere at 4:25 AM on June 29

The numbers dropped in half while I was watching this morning, and are now around 100k. The light's going out, people.
posted by mittens at 4:52 AM on June 29

I found somebody diligently trying to make a swastika and undid it for them.

Ah, nevermind, there are clearly some scripts running to keep some patterns in place.

Is the website just an extremely simplified model of an open-participation communication-capable networked system built to experimentally demonstrate how unmoderated virtual spaces get overrun by harrassment/hate speech/spam and force marginalised participants out?
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:18 AM on June 29

(Are we going to see the URL buried in a footnote in the methods section of an arXiv quantitative-sociology cs.SI preprint along with one-million-checkboxes.com and one-million-check-boxes.com forming the "right-click-to-report-misuse-to-human-moderators" and "right-click-to-report-but-secretly-it-goes-to-/dev/null" cases for comparison?)
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:26 AM on June 29