The Pudding ran an experiment that asked people to trace a shape. They would string together the sketches to make a flipbook to see where a single line or a circle would end up. They published the results:
Every shape devolved into a scribble, which I feel is a metaphor for information on the internet.
They also ran a sidequest that tested anonymity and the tendency to draw inappropriate things online. While the results were underwhelming, I appreciate the effort to see how many times a phallic sketch appears. Four times out of several thousand.
See also the Aaron Koblin works — a collaborative Johnny Cash music video, a song by 2,008 voices, and a hundred dollar bill drawn by thousands — that inspired the flipbook project. Although nothing beats Reddit’s pixel wars in 2017.
Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics
