Reddit’s 2015 April Fools’ social experiment involving a countdown timer was called The Button.
The Button appeared on Reddit on April 1, 2015, as an online meta-game created by Josh Wardle, who used the username powerlanguage. It displayed a large button beside a 60-second countdown. Whenever an eligible user pressed it, the timer reset to 60 seconds for everyone else. Each account could press only once, turning a simple interface into a collective test of patience, curiosity, and timing.
Users who clicked received colored flair based on how much time remained. Purple represented the earliest clicks, while red represented presses made near zero; users who never clicked retained grey flair. These colors became social identities within the community, inspiring groups and elaborate theories about what the experiment meant.
The experiment ended on June 5, 2015, when the timer reached zero without another press. More than one million accounts participated, and the final recorded total was 1,008,316 accounts. The Button is often confused with a generic countdown prank, but its recognized title was specifically The Button.