The Plan:
For my intervention I walked around the show floor of PAX East 2015 taking pictures of people on their 3DS video game consoles. I would then upload those pictures to a Twitter account I created called @On3DSatPAX with the hash tags #On3DS and #PAXEast2015. I managed to take 35 photos total, although some photos contain multiple people on their 3DS consoles.
I didn’t verbally tell anyone about my Twitter account, what I used to communicate was a feature of the 3DS called “Street pass.” Street pass works when two people with 3DS consoles are close to each other where upon the both send a digital avatar for the consoles, known as a Mii, to the adjacent persons 3DS. The Mii can then be viewed with a personalized message. I made a Mii in the likeness of Mario, gave him the name “On3DSatPax,” and gave him the message “Find Mii Twitter.”
So for Friday and Sunday of the PAX convention I walked around PAX with my 3DS in my pocket taking pictures of people in the hopes that they would get my message and see themselves posted on Twitter.
The Strugle:
The 3DS does not allow the use of @ symbols in the use of either the name or the message of the Mii, not that it mattered because both the name and the message used the maximum allowed characters. So I tried to compromise in a way that was both clever, and relatively easy to understand the meaning of.
Something I did not realize before doing this was that a 3DS can only store up to 10 street passed Miis at anyone time. Meaning that if someone was not checking their 3DS regularly, there was a good chance they would not receive my Mii or my message due to the amount of people at the convention also street passing with each other.
The Result:
By the end of the convention I had four followers, who I assumed to be bots and spam accounts, and had recieved only two messages, which had nothing to do with the subject of my Twitter account. I also have know way of knowing if anyone saw anything I posted due to my Street Passing, and seriously doubt that anyone who did recieved my Mii bothered to read its name or its message (I usually don’t). You can see the documentation of the intervention here: https://twitter.com/On3DSatPAX