By Reddit is a good place to look at other people's art. There are sub-strands filled with acrylic pantings of barn owls, graphite pencil portraits of Miley Cyrus and sunsets from every corner of the world. Last week, it also became a great place for paintings of pantings - and paintings of paintings of paintings - as a new trend lit up the message boards.
It began in an unusually wholesome manner for a social network best-known for alt-right collectives and flat earth truthers - with a painting of a swan. "My mom painted this and said no one would like it. It's her 2nd painting" said user Gaddafo in r/pics.
Reddit often rewards these kind of thirsty but harmless cries for affirmation, meaning you'll often see, say, a photo of a cat missing a leg with the caption "this guy thinks he's not cute, let's prove him wrong!" bumped to the front page of the website.
Gaddafo's mother panting was liked - by 75.8k people if you use Reddit's up-voting system as a metric of approval. Underneath the photo a user wrote "Someone paint the photo of his mom holding her painting and repost it with the same title for extra extra karma" and set off a chain reaction. Soon, strangers in different cities or countries were uploading their efforts.
As the challenge spread, it broke off into many different pathways and works of art, but each with the swan and Gaddafo's mother in the middle. It ended with interactive web map, not dissimilar to the flowcharts that started popping up after choose-your-own-adventure Black Mirror film Bandersnatch aired on Netflix.
It's not unusual for the site to be gripped by a creative challenge - one of the most popular sub-Reddits is 'PhotoShop Battles', where users upload an amusing photograph of a politician tripping or footballer being hit in the face and say: "Ok Reddit, see what you can do".
The Inception-esque painting challenge is, like a lot of what proves popular online, rather twee. But then it's one of those increasingly rare reminders that the internet doesn't have to be depressing or frightening - that it could be as carefree as a son trying to get some love for his mother's egret painting, if we want it to be. As the lady herself put it after creating a Reddit account to see what she had started, "I'm smiling. Most people are really kind."
