I’m Kida, the representative of Universe. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask the respondents here for their opinions.

Everyone, Thank you all for your answers! I completely forgot that I’d asked the same question back in November, so I ended up asking it again. Sorry for being such an attention seeker! I’m glad I got to hear everyone’s perspectives again. Many of you went out of your way to mention that you were offering encouragement, but both you and I understand that it won’t be easy. It might end up being something deliberately offline—at a pub, for example—or perhaps something like Snack Universe. Either way, I’m going to move forward with the idea, since it’s fun to discuss things like this. Discord didn’t occur to me, so I’ll look into it. Thank you, everyone!

I agree with your proposal. I’m happy to help!!

It’s fine if this turns into two things. It sounds fun, so I’ll answer both. Once you think of something, take action. Try, learn from the errors, and stop doing what doesn’t work—I think that’s the way to go. Personally, rather than building a website, SNS is at its peak right now, so why not use SNS as the platform? It feels like we’re in an era where attracting visitors through a website is difficult (and I imagine the number of visitors to the Q&A box is declining). Unless AI evolves a little more, it’s still pretty difficult for amateurs to build out a site properly. If you want to make it go viral: Instagram and X. If you want something a little more closed-off, like a members-only space: Discord or another chat tool. ↑ This could probably handle almost everything Representative Kida wants to do, and we wouldn’t have to wait a year—we could start right away. If you want to build more of a community, something like a fan club platform might work. ↑ I rewrote this because there are limited platform options for 18+ content. There may be even better ready-made tools than the ones mentioned above, so could someone from the systems team look into it? Use a cloud-based platform as the foundation, build a community, and connect it with SNS—Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. Content distributed with the help of AI could really catch on. Even the Q&A box used to get visitors and likes from people coming over from X, right? That seems to have declined now, and I don’t really feel like we’re getting traffic from X anymore, though… Maybe the website format itself is becoming outdated. This is just an amateur’s spur-of-the-moment idea. As long as I’m still capable of getting it up, I don’t want Universe Group to fade away or decline. So either way, I support Universe Group’s initiatives across the board and will fully get behind them and cheer them on!

Why not keep the current Q&A site as it is and launch a pilot project in a completely separate division? If it doesn’t work out, you can simply keep the Q&A site. If it goes well, you can expand further with two divisions. It’s great to see you trying something new. I’ll be happy to continue supporting you as an answerer.

Splitting them up is fine. I’ll make sure to look at both.

I think Mr. Kida should simply do what he wants as the founder. There’s no need to listen to other people’s opinions. Over the past three years, my company has reinvented itself as an AI-focused business. ChatGPT came out three years ago, and from that very moment, we went all-in on AI. That’s how we got to where we are today. Our partners and staff were skeptical about AI, and some clients temporarily left, but I didn’t care. After completely ignoring everyone else’s opinions, the company is now doing extremely well—and I’m enjoying my work so much that my motivation for papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) has plummeted. No matter how breathtakingly beautiful someone is, nothing can beat the excitement I get from my work. Mr. Kida should honestly pursue whatever excites him. Even if that ends up splitting the company and the respondents, and both sides eventually become inactive, I think it’s perfectly fine to ignore everyone else completely—as long as Mr. Kida is prepared to accept all the consequences.

I think it’s very good to strive toward the ideal. By making changes, things may get better or worse, and by calmly assessing the results, we can continue improving. This year, returning instant display to the old system—where posts are only shown after being reviewed—created an opportunity for things to improve, in my view. After trying both approaches, I think it also became clear that if the same person’s posts are displayed instantly 100 times in a row, the question box turns into a place that nobody wants to visit. Three or four years ago, there were reverse offers, serious discussions and consultations, and passionate, lengthy posts. It had the atmosphere unique to a question box. Since posts weren’t displayed instantly, answers were usually refined to a certain extent, and sometimes discussed, before being made public. That allowed questioners to use the answers as references, while answerers could properly express what they wanted to say. But perhaps because instant display led to more and more people fooling around, or simply because times have changed, or because Universe itself has become less freely active as the organization has grown so large, the question box has also changed into something safer and more superficial. I think it’s good to accept that change and try different things. Staff members other than Maezawa-san rarely answer questions here, but even now, I think that is one of the most valuable aspects of this question box. Why? Because the staff can’t answer. Why not? The reason answerers can respond, on the other hand, is simple: they can casually scribble something down quickly, like taking a short break during work. They could never do this as part of their job. Even if they were being paid, the responsibility that comes with receiving compensation would make it impossible. Being able to write smoothly, as if speaking, and finish in no time as a way to clear your head when work gets stuck—that’s possible precisely because it’s unpaid and casual. If it were work, you might get stuck just trying to write the first line. That’s a major difference. As long as the question box exists, I feel that value will continue to exist as well. It’s a shame that Kida-san can’t make offers to the female club members, isn’t it…? As for us, we don’t have enough time or energy to meet all the female club members… Thanks to Universe, we’re in a situation where we won’t have any trouble finding people to meet well into our later years, so we’re simply grateful. Given our age, I don’t think we’re likely to feel empty about it either, so we may not have time to attend offline meetups. I’m not sure whether we’d want to go even if we did… It feels as though we’ve been given magic that lets our happiness continue indefinitely… almost as if…

Since you restarted the column, I wrote and posted a few articles, but there haven’t been any comments from new people in particular. And the reverse offers that used to come in through this Q&A box two or three years ago have stopped as well, so it feels like the tide has turned—or maybe the fish have all gone somewhere else. I wonder where they are. If you mean we should change our fishing spot, I’m all for building a separate site. If both sites end up becoming deserted, then so be it—that’s still a result in itself. Would the difference between the old Q&A box (this one) and the new site be something like: “The old one gives answers AI could come up with, while the new one gives answers AI probably couldn’t”? The new site’s rival is AI. I’d like to see content that only someone with firsthand experience could answer. As for the direction, I think it’s important to decide from the outset whether you want to “go viral” or simply “have fun,” because the two goals are pretty much incompatible. If you just want to attract as many people as possible, you have to sacrifice some part of yourself and pander to them. If you want to have fun, though, you’re inevitably going to attract haters. Especially with papa-katsu papas, it’s basically like a socially powerful man baring his shin and saying, “Go ahead and kick me.” Still, like-minded people will gather, even if they’re few. Weirdly enough, I think it’s better when things are at least somewhat low-key. If it goes viral, society will turn against it and it’ll definitely get shut down. Was it Yuto, the papa-katsu producer? I wonder if women are still joining his group LINE these days. Wouldn’t it be an option to create a completely private, women-only group LINE where papa-katsu women can give each other advice—a boys-banned, strict-confidentiality group managed by Maezawa—and then guide members by saying things like, “You should ask the papas about this question through the public Q&A box”? Women may well want to consult anonymously with other women first. I wonder if they’ve been exchanging that kind of information through private Instagram accounts lately.