ANYWHERE, USA — Derek Fillmore had the bit ready before he opened his eyes Tuesday morning.
MAR10. March 10th. Mario Day. It’s right there. MAR — 10. Mario. The man has been waiting since March 11th of last year to deploy this observation again and today is the day and he would like everyone to understand that today is the day and he will be making sure they understand this.
“It’s Mario Day,” Derek told his wife at 7:14 a.m., holding up his phone to show her the date displayed on the lock screen.
His wife, who has been married to Derek for six years and has therefore experienced five previous MAR10 Days and the explanation that accompanies each one, said: “I know, Derek.”
“Because MAR10 spells Mario,” Derek said.
“I know, Derek.”
Derek considered this a successful opening. He moved on to the group chat.
The Rollout
By 7:30 a.m., Derek had posted a MAR10 Day observation to three separate group chats, his Instagram story, his Facebook wall, and his workplace Slack — the last of which he captioned “Happy MAR10 Day everyone!!” with two exclamation points and a mushroom emoji, which the Slack emoji library does not natively support and which Derek had installed as a custom emoji in 2023 specifically for this purpose.
Responses, logged by Supposedly News’s field team:
Group Chat 1 (College Friends): Three laughing emojis, one thumbs up, one person who said “lmaooo” without elaborating, and one person who replied “happy mario day bro” without acknowledging the MAR10 mechanic, which Derek found adequate but not fully satisfying.
Group Chat 2 (Family): His mother sent a heart. His brother sent “is that today.” His father has not responded and will not respond because his father does not check group chats with any regularity and when he does he replies to messages from three days prior as though they are current, which is a separate issue that the family has accepted.
Group Chat 3 (Neighborhood): No response. The neighborhood group chat is used exclusively for lost dog alerts and complaints about parking. Derek has misjudged this audience before. He has not stopped trying.
Instagram Story: Eleven views, four reactions, one reply that said “omg yes!!” from a friend who also plays video games and who Derek considers his most reliable audience for this material.
Facebook: His aunt liked it. His aunt likes everything. Her like is appreciated but does not constitute engagement with the premise.
Slack: Two emoji reactions — a mushroom and a thumbs up — and a reply from his coworker Marcus that said “nice” and then, after a pause of four minutes, “wait is it actually” and then, after Derek confirmed it was actually, “huh.” Derek logged this as a conversion.
The Midday Check-In
By 11 a.m., Derek had explained MAR10 Day to: his wife (who knew), his coworkers (two of whom engaged meaningfully, four of whom said “cool” and returned to their screens), the barista at the coffee shop down the street who said “oh that’s fun” in a tone that Derek categorized as “genuine” and his wife, consulted by phone immediately afterward, categorized as “she was being polite, Derek”), and a man in the elevator who said “I don’t really play games” and then got off on the third floor.
“The elevator guy was a miss,” Derek acknowledged. “You need some baseline Nintendo literacy for the full impact.”
This is correct. MAR10 Day operates on a two-part mechanic: first, the person must recognize that MAR10 is being presented as a date; second, the person must recognize that MAR10 spells MARIO; third — and this is where Derek loses a meaningful portion of his audience — the person must care. Steps one and two are achievable with explanation. Step three cannot be taught in an elevator between floors two and three.
The Afternoon Defense
At 2:15 p.m., Derek’s coworker Priya asked why he was still bringing up the Mario thing.
“Because it’s Mario Day,” Derek said. “All day. The whole day is Mario Day. That’s how days work.”
“You mentioned it four times in the standup,” Priya said.
“There were four relevant moments,” Derek said.
Priya considered this and returned to her screen, which Derek logged as a draw.
The Evening Assessment
By 7 p.m., Derek had achieved the following: fourteen people knew it was MAR10 Day who had not known at 7 a.m. Of those fourteen, approximately six appeared to find this genuinely delightful. Four found it mildly amusing. Three said some version of “cool” that Derek cannot fully interpret. One — the elevator man — appeared to leave the situation unchanged and possibly slightly confused.
“Net positive,” Derek said, reviewing his phone on the couch while his wife watched television next to him.
“You explained it to the Amazon delivery driver,” she said.
“He laughed,” Derek said.
“He was trying to get back to his truck.”
“He laughed,” Derek said again, and pulled up Nintendo’s official MAR10 Day deals page, because there are always Nintendo deals on MAR10 Day, and this is perhaps the most structurally sound argument for the holiday’s existence, and Derek is already planning next year’s rollout, and March 11th starts tomorrow, and the waiting begins again.
Happy MAR10 Day. It’s out there. Tell someone. Tell everyone. Manage your expectations about the elevator.
Brent Eyewitness filed this report having personally explained MAR10 Day to four people this morning before realizing he was doing the same thing as Derek. He has elected not to examine this further. He also got Nintendo deals. It was worth it.