Source: kobakei.la.coocan.jp
In 2004, a combination DVD of a Super Mario Bros. Super Show promo and Heathcliff the Cat was included in boxes of various participating brands of cereals.
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I added Twin Peaks music to this scene from Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live.
From: Life of Explosive Laughter 64: Aim to be Resort King! (爆笑人生64 めざせ!リゾート王)
Illustration of a Rock Kroc enemy commanding a group of Kremlings to attack Funky Kong's barrel plane, from an officially licensed 1995 Donkey Kong Country book.
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Old and forgotten animal crossing wild world (2005) website...
For those who have been following it, my Residents fan page is finally up, though I have a lot more stuff I eventually want to add to it. Anyways. check it out or whatever.
The Nintendo DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games contains a message that is encountered randomly that states explicitly that Wario and Waluigi are not brothers.
This was possibly an attempt to counteract several sources in the mid-2000s that appeared to suggest that they were brothers, such as Mario Party 5 and 6 calling their team "Wicked Bros.", the official site for Mario Kart DS stating that Waluigi is "Wario's weird sibling" and the European official website containing multiple segments from Wario's point of view that referred to Waluigi as his brother.
Nintendo's current official stance is that Wario and Waluigi's relationship is explicitly supposed to be a mystery.
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anyways it doesn’t really matter because the alternatives to corporate centralized social media have worse user interfaces. so I guess we’ll stick to the poorly moderated algorithmic advertising hell apps, and whatever the fuck Tumblr is, instead.
Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy
Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.
The Diagnosis
In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.
Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.
To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.
Our Guiding Principles
To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.
- Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
- Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
- Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
- Retain and grow our creator base.
- Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
- Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.
Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.
The key takeaway here is that sufficiently large social media is inherently unsustainable without also exploiting its userbase in some way. Tumblr has been incompetent enough so far to make this mostly harmless but as time goes on it becomes more and more necessary to adopt the standard mainstream social media design decisions that maximize user engagement (a process known as “enshittification”).
Right now Tumblr stands as one of the few “mainstream” social media sites that hasn’t completely imploded or eroded user trust (and so is where a lot of Twitter/Reddit/whatever is next to burn down users have migrated to). But remember that this is not guaranteed. We joke that the content on Tumblr is too unhinged or cursed or horny or whatever to ever succumb to commercial fates of Twitter or Reddit but it really isn’t. There is nothing protecting a corporate centralized social media site from destroying itself and Tumblr is no exception.
Tumblr is probably going to be fine in the short term but please do not forget that it will probably die eventually too