It is interesting to compare the retention of the "Drewpocalypse" nations compared to previous "Nationstates got mentioned somewhere" floods. I think the fact Drew did two videos reasonably close together may have helped boost the retention a little compared to standard floods. Usually in a "NS got mentioned somewhere" flood, we get a brief spike in new nations, but most only login the once and fade away a month later, but Drew did a couple of videos on it in a reasonably short timeframe and I kinda think that "reminder" after the initial spike may have encouraged more of the flood nations to check on their own nations as well.
That was a freakin' INSANE time for moderation too. You figure that there's always going to be some small percentage of new players who are just rulebreaking jerks, but 1% of say, 100 nations is a LOT fewer jerks than 1% of 10,000 nations! Even more bonkers is the fact that we had just added a moderation toggle to throttle new account creation just days before it hit. (Prior to that, nation creation was either on at full speed or turned off completely; the new throttle tool just gave us the option to lightly apply the brakes a little to slow it down if needed!)
Speaking of "NS got mentioned somewhere" floods, we're still getting a noticeably elevated influx of new nations from Russia (the Russian TikTok flood, potentially exacerbated by current events and potential internet censorship dodges,) and from Brazil (the Brazilian social media flood.) I imagine we're also still getting a steady trickle from Drew's viewers too if the videos are still up about NS.
