Website / Scratch

"Imagine, program, share"

— The site's motto

If you've been at a beginner computer programming course, then you may know what Scratch is.

Scratch is an educational programming site created by Lifelong Kindergarten Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was intended to be an easy introduction to programming for children, with its own visual programming interface of the same name. However, due to its social media features, such as sharing projects and commenting, it's seen as a (mostly) non-educational site for kids (and teenagers), where people can share projects from games to animation to art. It's still a nice place for basic coding, though. Scratch is also infamous for its strict and overprotective moderating.^note This is done with good intentions, as Scratch promotes itself as a well-reputed coding platform for children of all ages and doesn't want to deal with the wrath and angry complaints from Moral Guardians about how their children found some super scary project online. However, this is regarded as a huge pain in the neck by older users, who are used to intense yet kid-safe content, and think that Scratch is willing to scrub the site down to the point where toddlers can browse it unsupervised.

The development of its own educational programming language started in 2003 and was completed in 2007, with a site launched to go with it.

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Creators on Scratch who have their own articles here:

• TheLifeConqueror
• scratchU8
• WazzoTV
• NostalgiaSquare

Works on Scratch which have their own articles here:

• A Different Snowgrave (programmed in Scratch, but hosted on GameJolt)
• The Adventures Of Scratch Cat
  • The Adventures Of Scratch Cat 2
• Angry Birds Scratch Edition
• Vectoid TD 3D
• Alex Danger Dice
• book (Just for Fun)
• Broken's Strange Adventures
• Burgess Shale
• Challenge to Win
• Flight: The Tale of Two Sisters
• Geometry Dash Episodes
• Object Invasion
• The Renegade
• Welcome to My World

April Fools Scratch Wiki is the silly version of its wiki, Scratch Wiki.

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Scratch and its projects in general contain examples of:

• Ambiguous Gender: The mascots of Scratch, besides Scratch Cat^note Scratch Team member ceebee has stated that Scratch Cat is non-binary, though many users refer to Scratch Cat as male, Gobo, Pico, Tera, Nano, and Giga, all have no confirmed genders, which leaves the users to guess their genders. The most popular theory states that Gobo, Pico, and Nano are male and Tera and Giga are female, while another popular theory states that they are non-binary.
• Animal Talk: On the April Fools' Day of 2016, people could comment on ScratchCat's and he would "reply" in cat language^note Basically random "mews", "purrs", and "licks".
• April Fools' Day:
  • The website pulls off several pranks every April Fools' Day, involving replacing commonly-used words with funny words, announcing fake news, adding new emoticons, and using shout outs to various things in the media.
  • April Fools Scratch Wiki also throws off April Fool pranks by replacing several articles with satirical joke articles.
  • The 2019 prank gives a tutorial on how to teach your cat to use Scratch.
  • This Scratch Wiki article documents the pranks done over the years.
• Art Evolution: In late 2014, redesigns of the Scratch characters appeared. To see it for yourself, just compare this old Pico art◊ with the new Pico art◊.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: The Dinosaur3 sprite in the Scratch 3.0 sprite library is a pterodactyl, which is not a dinosaur. Someone took this very seriously.
• Ascended Glitch: The Semicolon Glitch^note A tiny semicolon could be seen at the bottom of each page, returned for the April Fool pranks of 2014, 2016, and 2017.
• Ban on Politics: While politics and religion can be discussed in projects and studios, they are prohibited from being discussed in the forums, since they are likely flame baits.
• Beeping Computers: 2 sound effects in Scratch's sound library sounds exactly like that.
• Bowdlerise: Since Scratch is supposed to be for all ages, Scratchers have to censor content inappropriate for children^note Well, not all inappropriate content, since Not Safe for Work content, even if censored, will be taken down immediately they use in their projects before sharing. This also happens when a project is taken down and a Scratcher has to alter it before resharing it.
  • Scary projects that are taken down and later remade to be acceptable for Scratch may result in Lighter and Softer and Nightmare Retardant. Some Scratchers have their projects taken down frequently which results on them attempting to make lighter animations, which almost never works. Here are three good examples.
• Cartoon Creature: Gobo and his friends. It is unknown what species they are, although many users consider them to be aliens.
• The Chew Toy: Countless "Beat up"^note No, not Beat 'em Up projects where you click buttons just to induce agony in the targeted character. Exaggerated if there are more than 20 buttons. A popular example would be Beat Up Sonic, with a giant remix tree
• Clip-Art Animation: Animations done by the inexperienced are usually those.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Scratch Cat is a cat.
• Edible Theme Naming: The Edible Scratch April Fool's prank of 2015. In the joke language, "Edible Scratch", food puns are thrown around. Even Gobo and his friends are turned into food, with their names as food puns on their original names.
• Emoticon: Comment emoticons of a Scratch Cat head, waffle, Gobo, some food^note Part of the April Fools prank of 2015, candycorn^note In honor of Rjlance, a Scratch Team member who left the job; he always used candy corns in conversations with Scratch Team, a confetti horn^note To celebrate 10 million Scratchers, it used to produce confetti when clicked, and travel objects^note Part of the April Fools prank of 2016. Cliche yellow-headed faces are used as emoticons on the forums.
  • As part of the 10 year anniversary, more convenient emoticons were added, which used Scratch Cat's face in various emoticons.
• Eyes Always Shut: Giga and Nano.^note In the revamped 404 page, Giga has one eye opened.
• Digital Avatar: A user icon can be uploaded to the site, replacing the default user icon with a white silhouette of Scratch Cat.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: Enforced by the Scratch rules, due to one of the "report project" reasons being "Uses realistic weapons", which states depictions of realistic weapons, such as pictures of guns and gunshot sounds, aren't allowed, however "cartoon or fictional items like laser beams are okay".
• Fan Remake:
  • A lot of these exist on Scratch. Just do a search for a name of a video game and you'll likely get a Scratch recreation of that game. However, a Pac-Man remake resulted in a DMCA complaint from Namco.
  • Surprisingly, Scratch was well-known for hosting recreated Five Nights at Freddy's games online for free, before the Five Nights at Freddy's project restriction was introduced.
  • And Fortnite too.
• Fingerless Hands: Scratch Cat, Gobo, Tera, and Pico. Giga and Nano have mitten hands.
• Funny Animal: Scratch Cat is most likely this, despite only being heard meowing by humans.
• Fun with Autocensors: As April Fool pranks in 2011-2013, various non-profane words were replaced with funny words. For example, on April Fools 2011, every instance of "you" was replaced with "pikachu". More info can be seen on the Scratch Wiki.
• Game Mod:
  • A user can do this to a random project by remixing.
  • In fact, there are many modifications of the Scratch program, which add cool and useful features which can make creating a project creating a real software. Most of them are mods of Scratch 1.4, although there are few Scratch 2.0 mods. A list of known Scratch modifications can be seen here.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language:
  • Some projects, which are in a language other than English, reach the front page, usually if a Scratch Team member features them. For the convenience of English-speakers, an English translation is usually created by either the creator or a viewer.
  • In fact, a lot of type of these projects are Japanese, due to Scratch's popularity in Japan.
• High School AU: Not really a high school, but as part of the April Fools prank of 2017, there was Mascots in Training, a school where mascots go when they get deleted from a project.
• Mascot: Scratch Cat.
• Meaningful Name: Scratch is named after DJ term, "scratching", which refers to putting together bits of music into songs, like putting scripts and sprites to form a project. Remix, which is a Scratcher's remake or alteration of another Scratcher's project, is based off the same music term.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: Scratch, in short words, is supposed to be for everyone. It attracts kids with a cheery design, cute official characters, and an easy way to create games and animations, while it attracts teenagers and adults with focus on coding and a large community.
• Network Decay: Major Shifts That Fit example. Like said above, Scratch was intended to be an educational site where young kids would learn the basics of programming and create their simple web projects. Because of the ability to upload and share projects with others and several other social media features, Scratch is now treated as generic work-sharing site, mostly by the older users. In other words, Newgrounds for kids. However, most projects utilize code and Scratch is still a popular software/website for teaching programming languages.
  Harakou (A Scratch Team member): Scratch is a site that encourages creativity in many forms. We'd love it if everyone used the programming aspect, but we're not going to require it.
• Product Placement: During the Hour of Code in 2015^note An educational event that gets students in school to practice coding for an hour, which happens every December, Cartoon Network partnered with Scratch and promoted one of their shows, We Bare Bears, on the site, along with a "hide-and-seek game" activity. In 2016, Cartoon Network again promoted The Powerpuff Girls (2016) and Steven Universe.
• Scunthorpe Problem:
  • Because of how referrals to some sites based on private chatting, such as Discord and Amino, are censored, as one of the ways for Scratch to avoid any risk of blame from a Moral Guardian when a child goes on there and gets sexually preyed upon, it's cumbersome to refer to literal discord or the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic character, or amino acids.
  • LMFAO is censored because it's an acronym for a profane phrase, even if someone needs to credit the creator of "Party Rock Anthem" as enforced for any work someone uses but is not theirs.
  • "R34" is censored for being an acronym of a phrase related to sexuality, which gets in the way of talking about cars.
• Shout-Out:
  • Some April Fools jokes referenced pop and internet culture.
    • In 2011, whenever "April" and "Friday" is said in the comments, it turns into a link to the music video for Friday by Rebecca Black.
    • In 2012, it was announced that Scratch would be replaced by Neigh and the site was covered with references to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The Text Based Forum Games had an announcement referencing The Hunger Games.
    • In 2014, references to the Lolcat memes covered the whole entire site, including a joke language called "Meow".
    • In 2017, an Illuminati symbol emoticon was temporarily added.
  • Several Scratch Design Studios^note A regularly studio that invites users to create projects of a certain theme celebrated certain parts of pop culture. For example, one celebrated the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland.
• Sliding Scale Of Silliness Vs Seriousness: A large amount of projects tend to be silly and light-hearted, meant to cheer up a person's day. There are dramatic and sad projects also.
• Trope Codifier: Block-based, and otherwise visual, programming languages have predated Scratch, but Scratch remains the best known example of one.
• The Trickster: Pico is always thought to be this type, thanks to the 2013 April Fools' prank.
• World Tour: As part of the April Fool prank of 2016, Scratch Cat was supposedly on a vacation somewhere in the world.

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