Yes, it’s cute, it’s a folklore: people used to blow into the cartridge shafts of their Nintendo games when they had hardware problems. The thing is, it was all bullshit. II didn’t fix them, but rather changed things worse. But the urban legend has grown so strong that in the year of our lord 2023 there are still enough people blowing into their Switch that Nintendo feels the need to warn about it.
A tweet from the company’s Japanese support page reads: Says Nintendo:
There is a terminal in the game card slot for reading the game card. If you clean this with a cotton swab or insert a game card with a broken terminal, it may get caught in the terminal and break.
Please do not touch the inside of the game card slot.
If dust gets into the game card slot, use a vacuum cleaner to suck it up. Please don’t blow on it. Saliva can stick to the connectors and cause parts to rust or corrode.
The first piece of advice: that’s ok, that’s normal, honestly people might make mistakes like that, cCotton buds are always used where they shouldn’t be. But I’m glad you made the last paragraph clear in all its rough details, because that’s what you need to know! You’re throwing human spit into an electronic device every time you blow into it, which is super gross – “saliva can stick to the connectors” isn’t a funny phrase! – and you don’t help anything, you only risk damaging your device Nintendo Switch!
