What is ‘The Button’? A History of the Viral Internet Phenomenon

There are moments on the internet that defy explanation. Moments that, if you tried to describe them to someone offline, would make you sound completely unhinged. You’d be talking about colors, factions, a timer, and a single, tantalizing button, and they’d just stare at you blankly. I’m Jame, and I’ve spent years chronicling these weird, wonderful pockets of digital culture. And let me tell you, few events were as beautifully, chaotically, and profoundly human as Reddit’s 2015 April Fools’ experiment: The Button.

It started as a joke, a simple distraction on a day known for online pranks. But it morphed, almost instantly, into something more. It became a global social experiment, a petri dish for group identity, and a two-month-long soap opera that captivated millions. It was a game with no rules, a story with no author, and a community built on a single, shared action: to press, or not to press. In this deep dive, we’re going to journey back to that strange spring of 2015, dissect the mechanics of the madness, and explore the lasting legacy of a simple button and the society it spawned.

[AAP_TOC]

What is What is ‘The Button’? A History of the Viral Internet Phenomenon?

What is ‘The Button’? A History of the Viral Internet Phenomenon is… an in-depth exploration of the 2015 Reddit social experiment. This article details the mechanics of the viral event, the complex user-created societies and ‘factions’ that emerged, the psychological reasons for its massive engagement, and its lasting impact on internet culture and subsequent collaborative online projects.

The Dawn of the Countdown: What Was ‘The Button’?

On April 1, 2015, users of the popular social media site Reddit discovered something new. A simple subreddit, /r/thebutton, had appeared. At the top of the page was a large, unassuming button next to a 60-second countdown timer. The premise, on the surface, was ludicrously simple. Any Reddit user with an account created before that day could press the button. But here was the catch: you could only press it once. Ever. Each time someone, anyone, in the world pressed the button, the 60-second timer would reset.

The experiment had no stated goal. No prize was announced. The only outcome of your singular press was a “flair” next to your username—a small colored dot. The color of your flair was determined by the value of the timer at the exact moment you pressed it. If you pressed when the timer was between 60 and 52 seconds, you got a purple flair. 51 to 42 seconds, a blue flair, and so on, through green, yellow, orange, and finally, red for those who dared to press in the final 11 seconds. If you never pressed the button, your flair remained a default grey. And that was it. Those were the rules. A button, a timer, and a color. From these simple ingredients, a universe of meaning, conflict, and community would be born. I remember watching it unfold, thinking it was a simple one-day joke. How wrong I was.

[AAP_KEY_STAT: “Over 1,008,316 unique Reddit accounts clicked ‘The Button’ during its 71-day lifespan.”]

The initial hours were a frenzy of purple. People clicked immediately, either out of curiosity, a desire to be first, or a simple fear of missing out. The subreddit was flooded with posts from the newly-christened “purples,” establishing their identity as the pioneers, the impulsive ones. But as the day wore on and the timer continued to be reset, a thought began to creep into the collective consciousness: What happens if we let it run down? This question was the spark that turned a simple game into a societal phenomenon. The act of pressing, and more importantly, the act of *not* pressing, began to take on meaning. Choosing *when* to spend your one and only press became a defining characteristic, a permanent mark on your digital identity within this strange new world.

The Factions and the Flair: A Society is Born

What started as a simple color-coded flair system rapidly evolved into a complex network of factions, each with its own elaborate lore, ideology, and even propaganda. This wasn’t programmed into the experiment; it was entirely user-generated, a testament to our innate human desire to form tribes and create meaning. I was fascinated by how quickly these identities solidified. Within days, you weren’t just a user with a blue flair; you were a member of the “Azure Guard,” a proud follower of “The Blue.” Your color became your creed.

The factions developed distinct personalities. The **Purples**, known as “The Violet Hand” or derogatorily as “The Impatient,” were those who pressed in the first nine seconds (60s-52s). They were seen as the trigger-happy early adopters who couldn’t resist the allure of the click. Then came the vast majority: the **Blues** (51s-42s), **Greens** (41s-32s), and **Yellows** (31s-22s). They were the steadfast body of The Button, the everyday citizens who kept the timer alive through sheer numbers. They formed various groups and alliances, proud of their role in the great experiment.

Things got more interesting with the **Oranges** (21s-12s) and the legendary **Reds** (11s-2s). These users were “The Patient.” They waited, watching the clock tick precariously low before spending their precious click. The Redguard, in particular, were seen as the elite, the knights who swooped in at the last second to save the timer from death. Theirs was a high-stakes game, and they were revered for their nerve.

And then there were those who held a different philosophy entirely: the **Non-Pressers**. With their default grey flair, they were known as “The Greys” or “The Watchers.” Their belief was that the true purpose of the experiment was to see it through to its natural conclusion—to let the timer reach zero. They saw the pressers as participating in a futile cycle, and they patiently waited for the end. This created the central conflict of The Button: the pressers, who fought to keep the timer alive, versus the non-pressers, who wished for its demise. The entire ecosystem was a beautiful, chaotic mess of emergent social behavior.

[AAP_IMAGE: “A montage of Reddit memes and propaganda posters created for the different color factions of ‘The Button’, showing knights in red armor, shadowy purple figures, and stoic grey statues.”]

The Psychology of the Press: Why Did We Care So Much?

Why did a meaningless button on a website consume the lives of millions for over two months? From my perspective as a content expert who analyzes user behavior, The Button was a perfect storm of psychological triggers, expertly, if perhaps accidentally, deployed. It wasn’t just a button; it was a masterclass in engagement.

First and foremost was the **Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)**. This was a one-time event. You had one click, and if you didn’t have an account before April 1st, you couldn’t participate at all. This exclusivity created an immediate sense of urgency. You had to be there. You had to have a story to tell. Your one and only chance to press was a valuable, non-renewable resource, and the thought of wasting it or missing it entirely was a powerful motivator.

Secondly, the experiment brilliantly leveraged **Group Identity**. The moment you pressed, you were no longer just a random user; you were a “Purple,” a “Blue,” or a “Red.” You instantly had a tribe. This sense of belonging is a fundamental human need. Subreddits for each color popped up, filled with inside jokes, shared lore, and a common purpose. It gave people a team to root for and an identity to defend, transforming a solitary action into a communal experience.

Finally, there was the sheer **Gamification** and the tension of the countdown. The 60-second clock was a constant, ticking source of shared anxiety and excitement. Every time it dipped below 20 seconds, the community held its collective breath. Would a hero step in? Would a “Red Knight” save the day? This created a global, real-time drama. It was a game where everyone was a player, and the state of the game was always visible. The simple reward of a colored flair was enough to validate participation and solidify a player’s role in the grand narrative. It was a social experiment, a video game, and a spectator sport all rolled into one.

The Final Tick: The Day the Button Died

All good things, even bizarrely captivating internet experiments, must come to an end. For 71 days, the button was kept alive by the faithful. Through server crashes, coordinated attempts to drain the clock (by a splinter faction known as “The Grey Hope”), and the simple waning of interest, the button survived. The timer was a resilient beast. But as time wore on, the number of eligible, un-pressed accounts dwindled. The gaps between presses grew longer. The final days were a tense, dramatic affair, with the timer frequently dipping into the single digits.

On June 5, 2015, the inevitable happened. The community watched as the seconds ticked away. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… 0. For the first time in over two months, the timer hit zero. A post automatically appeared on the subreddit: “The Experiment is Over.” And just like that, it was done. The button was no longer pressable. The subreddit was archived, frozen in time as a digital monument to the madness.

The end, of course, came with its own lore. The title of “Last Presser” was bestowed upon a user named /u/BigGoron, who became an instant celebrity. Though technically, due to server lag, they were not the final person recorded in the button’s log, their press at the “01s” mark was the last one publicly witnessed by many, cementing their legendary status. The end wasn’t an anticlimax; it was a release. It was the final chapter in a story everyone had written together. The Non-Pressers had won, not through malice, but through the simple passage of time. The great cycle was complete.

The Legacy of ‘The Button’

So, what’s left after the timer hits zero and the subreddit is locked? The legacy of The Button is surprisingly profound. For me, it stands as one of the clearest examples of emergent social behavior on the internet. It demonstrated, on a massive scale, how humans will spontaneously create rules, hierarchies, myths, and conflicts from even the simplest of frameworks. It was a digital “Lord of the Flies,” but with less chaos and more memes.

The Button’s success directly influenced a series of ambitious April Fools’ events on Reddit in the years that followed. Projects like **Place** (2017), a massive, collaborative pixel art canvas; **Circle of Trust** (2018), a game of prisoner’s dilemma about betrayal; and **Sequence** (2019), a collaborative GIF-making tool, all owe a spiritual debt to The Button. They are all built on the same core principles: a simple mechanic, a massive user base, and the potential for complex, user-driven narratives to emerge.

More than that, it serves as a time capsule. It represents a specific era of internet culture, a time when large-scale, slightly bizarre collaborative projects felt new and exciting. It was a moment before the internet felt quite so commercialized and divided. It was a shared experience for millions of people, a secret handshake for those who could say “I was a Blue” or “I was a Knight of the Redguard.” It proved that community isn’t something that needs to be meticulously designed by developers; sometimes, all you need to do is provide a single, simple button and let human nature do the rest.

More Than Just a Click

In the end, The Button was so much more than a click. It was a blank canvas onto which millions of people projected meaning, identity, and purpose. It was a story we all wrote together, one second at a time. It explored our relationship with impatience, our need for belonging, our love of games, and our shared anxiety about an ending. We built a world around a timer, complete with heroes, villains, ideologies, and legends.

Looking back, I see it as a beautiful microcosm of humanity itself. We are all just watching a clock tick down, and we each have to decide what our one action will be. Will we act quickly? Will we wait for the perfect moment? Or will we simply watch and see what happens? The Button never gave us an answer to what it all meant. And maybe that was the point. The meaning was in the pressing, the waiting, and the community we built along the way.

People Also Ask