The Miiverse: A Retrospective

the online social media space is a constantly evolving and changing landscape technological progress has made it so millions of people all around the globe are just a click away when asked what social media do you think has had the biggest impact on society and humanity at large you might answer facebook instagram or even twitter but you would be wrong it's a proven fact that humanity reached its peak in 2012 with the launch of the nintendo miiverse launched in 2012 as a feature of the at the time brand new console the wii u the miiverse was a social media platform meant to connect nintendo players from across the globe intended to be good old-fashioned wholesome nintendo fun the site quickly devolved into chaos with communities at war discussion pages overrun with role players and e-daters kids posting really questionable things and for some reason a lot of chaos in the new super luigi u community so today let's take a look back at the history community and legacy of the nintendo miiverse buckland before we get into things i just want to give a huge thank you to surf shark for sponsoring this video for those not in the know surf shark is a vpn that keeps you safe online by encrypting all of your information so your personal data is safe from little coffee shop hacker men or worse big companies who want to sell all your info this is especially helpful when traveling or using public wi-fi but even at home it's super useful to have surfshark making sure all your personal info and download history aren't linked to your identity not only is surfjac great for keeping your data and private info safe it's great for accessing all kinds of region locked content there are tons of different shows that netflix doesn't have in certain locations for example here in new zealand we don't have breaking bad but with surf shark i can change my location to america and watch breaking bad to my heart's content there are over 3200 servers in over 65 countries so you can access shows movies news articles and more from anywhere in the world surf shark doesn't store monitor or track what you do so your activity is always completely private which in this new fangled digital age is pretty important it turns out snapchat is super great i love being able to watch all kinds of new stuff i didn't have access to before and keeping myself safe and private is also pretty great too head over to surfshark.deals weird web and enter the promo code weird web for 83 off and three months for free surfshark offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so it's definitely worth checking out once again that's code weird web the link will be in the description below thank you so much to search for sponsoring this video and now let's get into the story of the miiverse picture this it's 2012 social media is booming and every company is trying to get in on the action including nintendo nintendo had been around since 1889 yes you heard that correctly though during the early days they produced playing cards and toys they got into the games industry in the 1970s which is obviously what they're known for today and they went on to produce world famous consoles like the nes nintendo 64 game boy gamecube wii nintendo ds and wii u which is where our story begins the wii u was created as a successor to the wii and despite having more high definition graphics and more extensive online features the console sold a measly 13.56 million units compared to the wii's over 100 million so generally considered a flop as part of the wii u's launch and to emphasize the new online play features the miiverse was launched in exclusive nintendo social media app where players could discuss and share their thoughts on games miiverse for browsers was launched in april of 2013 and miiverse for nintendo 3ds in december of 2013 though it was far more prevalent on the wii u since it was built into the console as a core feature we should probably discuss what the miiverse actually was beyond the vague notion of it being a social media app of some kind me's are basically nintendo's version of an avatar you can create and customize your own wii to look like anything you want and a lot of players have taken the limited customization options as a challenge to create incredibly weird and complex characters for example peter griffin dinosaur batman and the mona misa once players had created their me and connected their console to the internet they were dropped into warawara plaza where upon hundreds of me's would swarm onto the screen like it was the end times these me's all represented hundreds of players from around the world and in the plaza players could see what games others were playing as well as their thoughts on them speech bubbles would appear above the me's heads with posts comments and even drawings made by other players about the various games and apps all taken from the discussion pages of those games the idea was to make the wii u feel like a community and give players an idea of what games and topics were popular among their fellow players you could also spy on the me's watching on like a benevolent god as they walked around talked with each other and danced blissfully unaware of your constant presence but the guarana plaza was only just scraping the surface of the miiverse iceberg to get into the nitty-gritty we have to actually look at the game community pages players can access community pages for all kinds of nintendo games and in these communities they could post text posts game screenshots and even drawings from there other players could give the post a year which is basically a thumbs up or reply to the post the whole game community discussion thing was basically meant to be a way for nintendo users to keep up with all the latest game news and hot topics and community posts but it very quickly went off the rails see miiverse had two main demographics very young children and trolls the site became a strange mix of random nonsensical posts made by bewildered eight-year-olds in outrageous inflammatory content and this created an extremely cursed yet hilarious community this game is fun but i hate my parents is anime over yet clarify please has it ended anime is a japanese animation style that has been used for a very long time and i doubt it'll end anytime soon damn okay fine i'm a homosexual i am looking for a sexy girlfriend this is netflix not eharmony shut up go outside and get some game the name of the game is your mom and let's just say i'm already playing it kid's badass if you think about it we wasn't really doing that bad i mean around 6 million unit cells there's only like 7 million people on earth so like almost everyone has a wii u two words that was hard but i beat it please friend request and follow me i am so lonely don't just yeah well what kind of stuff do you like slash do your mom how to annoy an xbox last ps4 fanboy rub the success of the wii u in their face i changed my name to sir buttkiss because my old name was so embarrassing my old name was anthony imagine if the next gen of kirby was anime with a 100 fan service and kirby be a cute hot high school girl with a hot body and a pink hair and kirby was human and then she have the power of copy things but just see the item instead of eating the item also my friend on facebook wants a kirby anime but kirby should be a high school girl i 100 agree with my friend please comment your opinions anyone want to chat about hmm let me think anything 18 plus can i please i'm only seven today's amber day let's celebrate a great girl named amber today since yesterday her parents took her 3ds away and all her devices and left miiverse she was a great person how does link drive he can't even talk he spends his time smashing other people's pots who gave him his license they were not responsible who led five babies in a dinosaur drive dinosaur shouldn't even be here they're all dead take it back samantha take it back my mother thinks i'm in school but instead i'm hiding in the garden with my wii u gamepad i miss the feeling of love the sound of the moon showing me true beauty i think about the time when she turned my loneliness into an addictive feeling of darkness accepting the light that was meant to exist within me i feel endless pain when i remember that it was my unforgivable mistake that caused my own horrifying suffering i'm a straight male but damn luigi is hot have you ever regretted making a comment there was also of course the infamous why can't metroid crawl post which quickly became a meme on both the miiverse and the internet with even nintendo themselves acknowledging it on their twitter and in their games now keep in mind all of these bonkers posts were going on in game discussion communities people were doing role plays and e-dating and communities meant for mario and rabbids the most infamous community for some reason was new super luigi u well known for the sheer volume of off topic and troll post to the point where it eventually became the unofficial official shitposting community it was no longer about new super luigi u or anything even remotely related to the game instead being filled with very early 2010's epic memes and troll posts with the phenomenon even getting its own kotaku article other communities were similarly infamous for example the super smash bros community frequently got out of hand and clashed with other communities in quote-unquote wars including one scuffle dubbed world war me again and it's clever one really hilarious phenomenon was the takeover of the air hockey community there was this game called air hockey and undertale fans began to use it as an unofficial undertale discussion board completely unrelated to the air hockey game fans began using the community to post their own thoughts discussions and drawings of the game and its characters this also happened when the mother fandom took over the pinball community and communities like youtube and smash were basically just used as off-topic [ __ ] posting channels and it was a pretty common phenomenon because miiverse users were restricted to only posting in video game communities like there was no off topic or free chat boards people would basically use small or unpopular games as unofficial official ship posting boards it was pretty ingenious though it probably resulted in a lot of confusion when people logged onto a games community just to find tons of furry and undertale art the role plays that went down on these again completely unrelated video game discussion boards were pretty crazy fantasy horror rp setting a cabin deep in the forest a psychopath me invites you to a sleepover in a cabin and you have to try and survive until dawn pokemon high school romance rp i will be my oc luke the lucario fantasy high school rp plus join my rp you can go a zero c or a made up character here is mayo see name moon kind human slash wolf looks wolf ears and tail that are silver white eyes unblind silver cloak hissed pre princess of her kind her mother and father died she is also getting hunted by hunters that's my oc plus join while we're a place like this ran rampant on the miiverse that all changed with the controversial miiverse redesign was launched in july of 2015. among other changes threads now had a 30 post limit so role plays and long threads were no longer viable obviously the role players weren't too happy about this now you may be wondering how all of this was allowed nintendo is a family-friendly company so it seems weird that they'd let their wii u social media devolve into such chaos and debauchery a lot of the blame for this falls on the moderators who were both extremely strict banning users for completely innocent and innocuous reasons and extremely lacks allowing nsfw and very inappropriate posts to stay up within the miiverse community there was sort of this idea that you'd be banned at least once no matter what you did and plenty of users have recounted stories of writing completely innocent posts or politely disagreeing with other users only to get a ban most of these were temporary but with how trigger-happy the admins were with the ban hammer these bans could rack up and result in a perma-ban many theorized that some of the admins were bots which would explain why they were so quick to ban users without actually looking at the evidence but as far as i know that was never proven on the other hand the admins were also super lex allowing miiverse wide wars and arguments nsfw trends inappropriate posts and sex role plays to fill the site for example bikini day a long-running tradition we're in on the 23rd day of each month users would post drawings of characters in bikinis it was basically just an excuse to draw lewd or suggestive art of characters and despite their vaguely inappropriate content it was a long-running tradition in the miiverse maid monday was a similar tradition and i'm sure you can extrapolate what that was about from the name miiverse after dark started by an infamous user called the bard was another early and prominent movement on the miiverse wherein users would post explicit nsfw artwork of characters during times where the admins weren't as active usually after 12 am est the post was supposedly a way to protest me versus censorship and strict admins though to be honest i don't think many people that engaged with miiverse after dark actually cared that much about the message behind it i see some sexy scooby-doo out on the miiverse timeline i'm not stopping to learn about the backstory i'm giving that [ __ ] a yeah the bard was actually just one of many influential miiverse users and yes miiverse influences were absolutely a thing some were famous for innocuous things like mario wii u who became famous after it was noted that all he did was make posts about the graphical quality of water and games others were famous for more salacious reasons like phantasma a furry artist and troll who gained a cult following after making furry pokemon miiverse after dark art as well as starting numerous clans and groups she had such a reputation that her haters came to be known as anti-fantas and her catchphrase nyar became a miiverse wide trend phantasma is hilarious to me because she has a page on the miiverse pedia that is so long and has sections like furry and foes another infamous user was talon he was once a normal average guy but getting banned one too many times made him go joker mode and become a miiverse ranter and hacker all of this is explained on his miiverse pedia page where he in first person explains his life story and the entire timeline of his time on the miiverse it all began when i got a wii u deluxe edition during christmas of 2012 after about a month or so something happened that changed my life forever you see the admins deleted a ton of my drawings for no reason they were just nintendo land drawings that contain no inappropriate content a couple hours afterwards i got a two-week ban this two-week ban gave me a fantastic idea back in those days the angry video game nerd was nearly the king of youtube nearly the king of course i knew who avgn was too i loved how he would rant about small things in the most exaggerated way to get back at nintendo i decided to create a miiverse account that did the same thing avgn did however i would only rant about nintendo this goes on for about five to ten pages it's basically an autobiography there's even a quote section at the bottom and who just from reading this you can tell this this guy is a spicy level 100 redditor i'm going to go on the internet and state my opinion and here comes the flame war miiverse the only thing duct tape can't fix the sonic franchise is like a cow it gets milked way too often by the way a lot of this took place during the era of the dank meme so late epic trolling and harambe and mlg were funny which explains a lot of this we should also touch on mitomo for a long time miiversus had been asking nintendo for a mobile version of the miiverse and well instead they got miitomo mitomo is technically unrelated to the miiverse and is actually far more similar to the nintendo game tomodachi life but similarly it was a nintendo social media app based around me's you could customize your mii and it would ask you questions which you could reply to and from there your friends could comment on and like it naturally players began replying to these innocuous questions with outrageous and memey answers so they could screenshot it and post it online and the mitomo photo feature spawned even more outrageous behavior miitomo allowed players to edit photos adding real pictures me pngs text and special effects and while this was meant to be used for innocent fun it spiraled out of control pretty quick despite gaining over 10 million global users within just a month of its launch it was found that only about a quarter of players actually opened the app regularly and the hype quickly died down mitomo was closed in may of 2018 just a few years after its release but miitomo wasn't the only me based depth shut down and the beloved miiverse would face the same fate the nintendo miiverse was shut down on november 7 2017 10 a.m pacific time users were given about two months warning and in that time they flocked back to the miiverse to spam shitpost and say their goodbyes nintendo collated thousands of goodbye drawings containing artwork of anime girls squid kids goodbye messages and photorealistic portraits of nintendo developers the drawings within combine into a mosaic dedicated to saying farewell to the miiverse a mosaic which is still circulated around the internet to this day while nintendo allowed users to request an archive of their post history which would be sent in a url through email the post history didn't include replies or interactions and users worried that the miiverse would be lost all of the cringy roleplay threads miiverse after dark posts and community wars would be lost and the miiverse in all of its unhinged glory would be forgotten nintendo uses quickly scrambled to archive the miiverse and on january the 3rd 2018 a web developer called drastic actions launched the archive verse the archive verse was an archive of the entire miiverse and contained over 200 million replies 100 million posts 75 million screenshots 72 million drawings and 8 million user profiles a total of over 17 terabytes worth of content this archiving effort was widely praised as the archivers essentially preserved an entire community that would have otherwise been completely lost while the users could request a copy of their own contained post history this was an archive of everything the posts the replies the drawings the profiles the communities everything and the amount that they managed to save is honestly staggering however for some the archive wasn't enough they simply couldn't live without the miiverse in their life and this is where miiverse clones come into play according to the miiverse clonopedia which is a real thing the first documented miiverse clone came as early as 2013. the xbox burst was a browser-based japanese miiverse clone where users could post images and drawings and similarly it quickly devolved into crew dick pics and anime drawings also as a side note the xbox burst wasn't actually related to the xbox or xbox live in any way it was just a browser site that used xbox's name for aesthetic purposes after the closure of xbox first there was a lull in the clone market for several years until the launch of grape and closed verse and this is where the story gets buck wild and not in a good way so grape was the first notable clone created by miiverse user and hacker aryan cordy it replicated the popular pre-2015 redesign interface which miiverse uses far preferred though despite this grape did not find success and quickly shut down however aryan cordy and collaborator pf2em launched another miiverse clone called closed verse which found huge success it was developed and launched about two months before the closure of miiver so they were able to get in and like use the miiverse for advertising in postal lover communities and get a bunch of the users of miiverse to jump ship closed burst would eventually reach over 10 000 users and for good reason it took everything users loved about the original miiverse and improved on it it gave users the ability to add images and gifs and edit their posts more customizable user pages and profile the ability to draw using colors and there was no post limit it was looking like closed verse would be the perfect site for ex-miiverse users with its improved features and not just a bot moderation team but things would very quickly go downhill the site was plagued with constant bugs and service shutdowns and the moderation ended up being worse than me versus the admins moderated the site poorly with several being corrupt and unprofessional giving random users admin permissions and haphazardly deleting posts and accounts hilariously they began trying to quote unquote control the humor of the site because they found users to be unfunny they started using bots to control the humor of the site as well as putting rules in place banning the use of impact font memes obviously their attempt at controlling the literal humor of an entire side by banning unfunny users while ironically pretty funny didn't last very long and they eventually gave up on the endeavor less funny though was the reveal that aryan cordy creator of the site and basically the face of the whole project was a massive creep and i'm using that word because the actual word that i want to use would probably get this video demonetized he was revealed to have been sending extremely inappropriate messages to users as young as 11 even hiring one admin because she sent personal pictures edem was leaked by a user where aryan admitted to downloading 17 gigabytes of data from the dark web and feared that some of it might be illegal content he responded to the user base's rising outrage by confirming that yes indeed some of it had been cp but he quote unquote deleted it it was also revealed that aryan and other administrators were able to view the private dms of every user on the side the hate around him got so bad that an encyclopedia dramatica article was written on him and he became infamous even outside of the miiverse clone community for being pretty horrible shortly after this aryan stepped down from the public eye and deactivated his account though he was still technically the owner of the site and closed burst was shut down in april of 2019 pf2m revealed that it was because aryan had his computer seized by the police and so the servers had been forcibly shut down i haven't been able to find any concrete proof of this other than claims by the person running the domain after the site shut down likely pf2m they wrote that aryan had admitted everything to the police and handed over his computers but this didn't result in being sent to jail or juvie and he was allowed to return home again take this with a grain of salt because there's not really anywhere to prove this so for now it's just hearsay closed verse has remained inactive ever since definitely for the best and as of 2022 the domain is inactive several other miiverse clones like indigo oasis and ui burst stuck around but failed to reach the popularity that closed burst did and so around 2019 to 2020 the era of the miiverse clone was officially declared to be over as they all shut down while i do think a lot of these projects had noble intentions recapturing the magic of the miiverse and bringing the old community back together in my opinion i just don't think any of them would have worked the thing that made miiverse so special and so cursed was that it was a nintendo property for the wii u clueless kids who couldn't spell and didn't understand what was going on were logging on and posting nonsense others were trolling the luigi and mario pages and overwhelming these wholesome communities with anime art and bikini day picks the fact that it was meant to be a simple wholesome nintendo game community made it all the more hilarious when the undertale community swarmed in and kids went on hour-long edgy wolf roleplay threads and people started clans and wars the miiverse clones were effectively no different than reddit with a miiverse coat of paint all the admins were their epic meme lord me verse trolls and everyone who joined had to intentionally look up the site in their web browser and sign up it had none of the charm and innocence and hilarity of the original with people stumbling into the miiverse and not really knowing what it was for and just kind of doing their own thing whether it was cringy e dating posting about water graphics fighting with smash fans or asking why metroid can't crawl nintendo tried so hard to make it a normal app but users made it unhinged at every turn and that's what made it so glorious sometimes when you love something you have to let it go none of these miiverse clones could have captured the chaotic energy of the original and that's okay it was special in its own way but why exactly did the miiverse shut down in the first place nintendo's official answer read quote we decided to end the service at this time because among other reasons many users are shifting to social networking services many miiverse users claim that it was instead because of the rambunctious users constantly breaking the rules in terms of servers by posting inappropriate rudin ini cfw posts and drawings the true answer is likely a combination of both moderation for miiverse was a full-time job especially with how unhinged the community was and as far as i'm aware nintendo wasn't making any profits on the site unlike miitomo which had in-app purchases for cosmetic items miiverse was completely free with no ads or purchases which is what made it so great but also very unprofitable miiverse was created to help advertise the wii u and make people want to buy it for its online play features but by 2017 which uncoincidentally was the year that the switch released the wii u was kind of obsolete nintendo already had enough on their plate with the switch launch and paying for the miiverse servers and moderators probably just wasn't worth it at this point the mibus was likely just a money and resource train on the company it's unfortunate but the reality of most big corporations is that they tend to do what's best for money and not necessarily the user base so miiverse was shut down still the miiverse lives on both in our hearts and in the modern resurgence of wacky miiverse posts there are tons of twitter accounts and even a whole subreddit dedicated to the horrible and hilarious posts of the miiverse and they're frequently circulated all around the internet as memes in this way the miiverse can be appreciated by a whole new generation for its weirdness and wildness but the archiver shows us another side miiverse was strange and weird and funny but it was also just a wholesome community people made friends and memories together on it and there's a reason that everyone was so sad when it shut down the miiverse was a weird mix of wholesome and totally bananas content and that's what made it me verse i hope today that all the ex-users can look back not with sadness but with fun nostalgia and all the memories get it i'll see myself out thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it um i really hope that you enjoyed that video topic i've been wanting to cover the me verse for a while i find it a really funny topic um so i really hope that you guys enjoyed it a huge thank you to mark weston michael and joey for doing voices they're all amazing uh all their links are in the description um please do go check them out they're really cool if you ever have any suggestions for things that you want me to cover in the future definitely let me know i'm always open to new video topics and stuff so yeah if you have any suggestions definitely let me know below thank you again surf shark thank you again to you guys for watching i really hope to see you in the next one um and bye thank you so much to my garfield overlords over on patreon fitzy jorge k cruz michelle olson met lrj chicory troubazonde s.h.s.l simpson doug jordan nielsen dana holmgardner charlie b simon john leach rin pendragon pom agarophan xavier arajo helm hamburgerhand lady cerebellum dozo blind sheriff whiskey the furby librarian red meth astriam vortex jesse chisholm sophie skitter brianna robinson grip gunderson jane kimono majiro joe bradshaw and arcantalis thank you guys so much for the support it means the world to me if you want to join these guys over on patreon the link will be in the description and yeah thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it and i hope to see you in the next one bye

Channel: Izzzyzzz

Views: 835,627

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Id: drW35fswWqA

Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022