On July 27, Mrs. Green Apple marked ten years of their career, celebrating their "MGA ~ FJORD ~ 10 Anniversary Live" show at Yamashita Park in Kanagawa. By all means, this milestone event would be one for any group to celebrate, let alone a band that, in their 10 years as musicians, is now experiencing their most consistent chart domination. But looking at Twitter painted a very different image of what was likely a packed event; it painted an image that led me down a multi-hour rabbit hole late into the night, investigating why ordinary people were turning to Yahoo Weather of all apps to voice their day-to-day life anonymously.

While Yamashita Park is no stranger to events, it's a space that only a band as big as Mrs. Green Apple could use for a live concert venue. But as the concert kicked off at 18:00, it took little time for residents across the bay to realize that they were unwillingly locked in for the three-hour ride. While a place like Twitter, the supposed "town hall of the internet," might seem like the most common place to voice frustrations as "Lilac" booms through your house wall, many residents surprisingly took to Yahoo Weather's "Local Reporting" feature to share complaints anonymously within their neighborhood. The result, a packed report map as seen above and below.

But why Yahoo Weather of all apps? And what brought people there in the first place? Originally launched in February 2025, the "Local Reporting" functionality of the app allows individuals to anonymously share a geo-tagged report of the current weather status for where they are at any given moment. The original implementation of this feature was intended to tackle unpredictable weather patterns and disaster events. Posts are limited to 60 characters and must be marked with one of three tags: "Sunny," "Cloudy," or "Rain". But these 60 characters, especially in a language like Japanese, leave a lot of flexibility, especially for a younger generation whose digital culture involves shortening phrases as much as possible. Coupled with these three mandatory tags, it allows for simple communications while expressing a mood, without getting bogged down by choice.

Posts are not served algorithmically, and are not affected by the amount of likes you receive – it's a simple map of your local area, with pins indicating comments from real people. Users can zoom outwards and move freely around all of Japan, though they can only post from where they are. It's simple, to the point, and could be viewed as exactly what is needed as social media becomes more and more bogged down by rhetoric. You have the freedom to zoom around, but at its core, the conversation is centered around your local community.

During my late-night deep dive into the app, I saw someone proudly announce that it was their birthday, before sharing that they wanted to eat soba, tagged with "Sunny". Within just a few minutes, several anonymous accounts wished the anonymous user a happy birthday, with a new post coming in two hours later, pondering if they had gotten their birthday soba. It was a simple and pure interaction witnessed in near real time, and a stark contrast to the usual hustle I see when walking through the city.

According to a LINE Research study conducted in 2023, roughly 50% of all teenagers in Japan were using some form of location-sharing service amongst their friend circle, with that number estimated to have ballooned to 70% as of 2025. Meanwhile, supposed anti-SNS apps such as BeReal are having their moment in Japan, with a sizeable portion of the younger generation claiming SNS fatigue to be a driving factor in moving away from traditional social media.

Yahoo Weather is, of course, aware of this emerging trend within its app, as well as its technical misuse. There is growing concern amongst some that the application, with a one-two punch of geo-tagging and by nature being a disaster prevention platform, could be misused. As of right now, however, Yahoo Japan reports that they are staying on top of it, with dangerous posts removed upon report or discovery.

Whether the newfound social media will have any serious staying power, or Yahoo Japan seizes the opportunity to create a similar app spun off from the weather feature, remains to be seen. But even if just for this very moment, it's nice seeing these human interactions from my local neighborhood, and really does leave me wondering what SNS really should be in 2025.