Imagine, for a moment, that Twitter was a healthy alternative to TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and every other social media service you could ever think of. Yes, BeReal too. Imagine someone built a new, improved social media service from scratch. No doomscrolling. No toxicity. No sermons. This new service will have the power – no responsibility – to free us all from the yoke of Being Online.
Imagine what this service would look like. Imagine if it could solve the myriad problems that are endemic to all social media platforms. Imagine how it could transform the social media experience from a glitzy Skinner box to something fun.
What if I told you that the service already exists, and besides, it launched with a hit game for the Nintendo Wii U in 2015?
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
For the uninitiated, each iteration of Nintendo’s ink-’em-up shooter Splatoon shipped with a bare-bones posting feature that allows users to draw a monochrome landscape (or portrait, as in). splatoon 3) and display that image on the user’s avatar, and even on billboards, posters and walls.
As someone who has led entire social media departments in the past, and for one has even gone semi-viral Tweet about Amelia BedeliaI consider myself a real expert in this field. I think I’m qualified to say that Nintendo accidentally created the only good social media service in existence. Here are some reasons.
there is no sermon
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
Twitter often feels like a toxic dopamine machine, as the service gears up for “engagement.” In other words, it doesn’t matter whether a post is good, bad, hurtful or helpful. As long as people are talking about it, you’ll see the discourse on your feed, because the Twitter algorithm looks at all those replies and retweets and thinks, oh people want to see this post, It can be really nice to beat someone’s ass in QRT, but at the same time, doing so only promotes the original bad post – which Then goes on to make the discourse about Discourse until the next Twitter main character appears, or until you throw your phone in the ocean.
Splatoon doesn’t have this problem because there is no answer. You have three ways to interact on the Splatoon social media service:
- Entry
- Response “Fresh!” for your favorite post
- reporting harmful posts
This means there is no hot take. There are no engagement-cultivation posts from brands. There are no algorithmic rewards for engagement, and no way to start a discourse, so there Is No sermons.
You can only post once
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
One of the most subtly cool aspects of the Splatoon social media service is that each user can only have one “active” post at a time. If you want to repost, you must overwrite your previous post. This has an interesting dual effect.
While platforms like Instagram and TikTok reward you with access to post a couple of times a day, Splatoon’s posting restrictions lead users to think about posting differently. Sometimes, this causes people to post amazing, detailed, high-effort art intended to adorn their profile for days; In other cases, it leads to rapid-fire, zero-effort shitposts (splatposts?). The true masters of the format are somehow able to do both simultaneously.
Paradoxically, the one-post-per-user rule lets players value each post (because you only get one!) It’s all the best elements of Snapchat without the bad.
it’s full of funny, cool people
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
Splatoon, at least judging by the post tone, looks like all the best Tumblr shitposters landed after their great getaway. if you jump in splatoon 3 Right now, you’ll see posts celebrating Sans Undertale’s victory mob psychoRegen Arataka at the Tumblr Sexyman Tournament; How easily hackable and modifiable the Nintendo 3DS is; How else . hastily written posts about splatoon 3 Is the first Nintendo video game for which Queen Elizabeth II was not around. The first “viral” Splatoon 3 post came from the Global Testfire event, and it simply read “I LOVE MEN” in the block text.
It has a ton of openly queer content splatoon 3, and any hateful or hardcore content is reported almost immediately into oblivion, thanks to moderation from both the player community and the community managers at Nintendo. Furthermore, embedding this social network into games like Splatoon Bake is a kind of user self-selecting, where, by necessity, the only people using the platform who are playing the game are. They are part of the Splatoon community, which means they have invested in creating a non-toxic community. They are really good at posting too. jfresh Perhaps the most famous example is – they have been consistently posting pixel-perfect Splatposts over the years, sometimes in webcomic format – but there are several other well-known posters in the community that are constantly displayed in lobbies and on stages:
there are no prizes
Image: Nintendo via Polygon
You can’t follow your favorite posters on Splatoon unless you see them and send them a normal friend request, which means there’s no follower count list on the post or users. Plus, how many “fresh!” There is no clear indication of Received responses on a given post. It’s all invisible – there’s no way for people to track their Splatoon posting effects.
This may sound like a minor change, but it flies in the face of every other posting platform. Even BeReal, arguably the healthiest social media platform outside of Splatoon, shows reactions, which subconsciously give users a drive to chase said reactions. Making likes invisible, and follows impossible, means that at the end of the day, you’re posting because you want to post. You’re screaming in the void – like you’re on any other stage. Only this time, you know you won’t get a response. So, you don’t expect one. Users just put something together and hope it makes someone smile or laugh, and that’s where it ends. It’s the low-pressure intimacy of BeReal, mixed with the hyper-public nature of Twitter, without anyone except the awkward and toxic dopamine cycles.
Imagine the same gift we’re given whenever we tap that damn bird: a poster’s paradise. No brand, no discourse, no answer, and no toxicity because no one is toxic – just a mountain of aimless posts that you can pop up and add at your leisure, where “I slather my pants Remains with a surrealist portrait with tentacles for the hair of the Mona Lisa. Both are equally valid, and equally appreciated.
