No Discourse. One of the main reasons Twitter feels like such a negative place stems from the fact that the service pushes users to maximize their engagement. This means that it doesn’t matter if a post is good, bad, harmful, or helpful – as long as enough people are talking about it, tweets are pushed into everyone’s feeds. And since Twitter’s algorithm sees all those replies and retweets and concludes that the tweet is particularly popular, polarizing and offensive posts work best. Here, users are simply induced to disagree and, in the end, only add fuel to the fire.

In contrast, Splatoon 3 has no reply function built into its social features. Users can only interact in three ways: by posting their own content; responding with “Fresh!” to posts that are liked; or reporting harmful posts. This lack of discourse not only makes the social features in Splatoon 3 more enjoyable, but also ensures that nobody’s hot-takes end up all over the game. In addition, it should be said that Splatoon simply has a great community that has little to do with toxic members, which seems to be a battle against windmills in other games like Call of Duty.

Players can only drop one post. Another subtly brilliant aspect of Splatoon 3’s social media is that each user can only have one “active” post at any given time. If someone wants to post again, they have to overwrite their previous post.

Although this may seem like a minor thing, it has some interesting implications. Most notably, however, it leads users to post in a different way rather than posting one post at a time like platforms like Instagram and TikTok do, while those platforms reward with reach for posting multiple times a day. In Splatoon 3, people are significantly more likely to either create an amazingly elaborate piece of art that then stays as an active post for days, or shitpost content without effort. However, true masters also show how they can do both at the same time. Posting also becomes more of a personal thing because you can only see how many likes or followers your post gets once. This encourages players to focus on posting something because they like it, not because it might collect a lot of likes.

Splatoon 3 also has an abundance of Creative, fun heads. Another great thing about Nintendo’s ink-’em-up shooter is that it simply attracts a lot of creative and fun players. As a result, Splatoon 3 has become a haven for some of the best Tumblr shitposters. Posts about how easy 3DS is to hack and modify; hastily scribbled notes Splatoon 3 is the first video game Queen Elizabeth II couldn’t live to see, and more. These and more posts are simply created as a joke and are just that, without any profiteering or advertising.

Splatoon 3’s social media is just great. It’s the lower pressure intimacy of say, BeReal, mixed with the hyper-public nature of a Twitter, just without weird toxic dopamine zombies. Become part of the awesome world of Splatoon today with a Splatoon 3 Key, plus you can find the announcement and all the info on the first Splatfest here. Additionally, we’ve compiled all the compatible Amiibos and here you can find out which weapon Splatoon 3 players hate.