Neopets' black market pet controversy, explained
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
- In March of 2021, the Neopian Pound chat exploded with accusations that black market pet sellers were creating and selling fake rare pets. To understand literally anything about this, we've got to go back to 1999 and trace the history of Neopets, from its early days, to the 2007 conversion, to this latest drama that shook the community. Welcome to Neopets.
0:00 What's Neopets?
2:52 Neopets goes corporate
3:40 THE CONVERSION
7:56 Changing times at Neopets
8:36 Neopets drama in 2021
10:17 BLACK MARKET PETS
13:00 The future of Neopets with Stephanie Lord
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Patrick Gill as BUSINESSWEEK
Clayton Ashley as JEFF DUNN
Nicole Carpenter as CHOQUIS
Josh Rios as TNT REPRESENTATIVE
Jenna Stoeber as BOOLANE
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#neopets - เกม
Hey!! Simone here. Holy cow. I've been working on this video for awhile and it's been a really stressful, intense process so I'm SO glad to see it out in the world. I hope y'all like it!!! You can read more of my interview with Stephanie Lord on the site: www.polygon.com/videos/2021/5/6/22423404/neopets-future-black-market-drama
Noticed that hidden lil scientology xD
good work Simone v entertaining and engaging
I remember reading the article and was happy to see even more developments here in this video! Love your work Simone, thanks for what you do!
Simone, Neopets, its black Market, and changing my perception of dear childhood memories. This is a must watch, thanks for your work!
Video rules. Another Great one!
Watching this video is the closest I've ever come to understanding cryptocurrency
If you replace every instance of "neopets" with "cryptocurrency", I think it works out about the same.
lmao
Neopets aren't complete shit that uses a lot of electical power to exist.
This just feels like gatcha or Gaiaonline all over again.
@@MV96_ well considering they exist online as the main avenue for engaging with them, id imagine they require a noninsignificant amount of energy to maintain. 21 million users may have equaled 10 million computers
me 24 hours ago, in the foolishness of youth: simone should do more videos about architecture
me today, wise in my old age: simone should do more videos about neopet crimes
Neopets has a LOT of crazy bs like this and I'd LOVE more of simone explaining more
simone explaining the neopocalypse would be incredible lol
yeah these video game crime videos are awesome i'd love to watch more
stages of clicking on this video included:
1. gets notification
2. sees title
3. "the WHAT now"
4. "oh cool it's a simone video essay, hell yeah"
update: 5. what the french fried Fuck
Same tho
Yep exactly. What the hell
Yesss
What? Hell yeah! What?!
I was utterly disinterested in the topic until I saw it was Simone, then I clicked.
She is literally, the best.
Also she made a video on rigging and I'm a rigger and I felt seen for the first time ever.
Finding out about sketchy Neopets shenanigans as an adult born in the 90s is like finding out that your favorite teddy bear sold meth on the side
Teddy Ruxbin talks, but he ain't no snitch
@@mildsoup8978 snitches get stitches
I never thought I would read "neopets" and "black market" in the same sentence.
Ah, I see you didn’t play past childhood. There’s been a black market for most of the games existence
I was only on there for the Halloween platforming and ice cream factory game. This is all new to me
You must be new to the seedy neopets underbelly. Just wait until you hear about the scientology stuff
@@CreoTan yeah, the people make games channel did a great video on this
As someone who got deep into the paintbrush market in the very early 2000s, it was always there
The idea of Neopets producing unconverted pets again got me so fucking HYPED. I haven't really touched the site since The Conversion and nothing is quite the same. I'm sure Neopets would get a TON of users back this way.
I'd 100% get back on it if I could get my UC babies again. My accounts have long been purged (let's be honest, it's likely at least the first two of them were hacked as well to get my UCs). Offering UCs as a premium feature would be a goldmine for the site.
I know my mutant lupe would love to go back to before i clicked probably stoned through his conversion, and changed him into a pissed off cartoon instead. Poor guy. Been my main homie since day 1 in 4th grade lol now im sitting on a neofortune and noone to share it with cause noone plays but me apparently lol
Neopets are just NFTs with extra steps at this point
:'( don't say that. its true but pls dont say it
🤯🤯🤯
@@RkkiTkkiTaavi it needs to be said
Some people enjoy living in neopia for the attractions
I HATE HOW ACCURATE THIS IS
I played Neopets as a kid, it’s a relatively light and happy memory, I just liked making omelettes and taking care of my pet.... but OMG! This conspiracy goes so deep. I think it’s honestly hilarious how crazy this got, and how committed some people are/were. Like damn.
Making omelettes 😂
we want our cute images okay!
The name Gelert comes from a Welsh folk tale about the best damn dog who ever lived and this is the representation I neeeeeed, thank u Simone
I vividly remember learning this when I first made my Neopets account and being really into it
@@polygon Awwh hell yeah, it warms my heart when Welsh stories make it out into the world ^-^
Wow I didnt know thats so cool!!!!
@@aleks-33 RIGHT there's a town in Wales called Beddgelert ("Gelert's Grave" in Welsh) with an actual grave for the good boy
My beautiful country has such stunning lore. The story of Gelert always makes me so sad, but it's really so deep and beautiful. Also, to any of my fellow Neopets playing Welshies, and non-welsh living in Wales who play, I hope you're all as passionate about Welsh independence as you are about Neopets 🏴💞 #annibyniaeth
Simone: BUT- there’s more
Me, twirling my phone cord ready for the hot gossip: THERE’S MORE!
Zesty
As a kid, I collected neopets plushes like an absolute madman. Everytime my parents took me to the mall, you KNOW I made beeline straight to the LimitedToo to scour for new plushes. The island kacheek was my absolute fave.
First it's the Pokemon card crisis from Vice, now it's a Neopets black market. These... these are the stories I care about.
If you're a fan of massive corruption in children's games, look at the myriad stories from Habbo Hotel, there's wild stories for days
Another suggestion would be to look into the economy crash of Gaia Online
@@the_meadow no don't remind me :'(
@@robocopyright3115 Anything more substantial than the 4chan raids? Something about pool having aids? (I'm more impressed that it's still around)
@@robocopyright3115 pools closed
My first neopet was a Gelert too and I was heartbroken and betrayed when they took the right angle out of their ears and made them all floppy
I love one (1) woman and her 15 minute long build up to a Chinatown reference
Someone could teach an entire economics course through in game currency markets.
I know someone wrote a whole paper on the Kingdom of Loathing economy, specifically focusing on the Conspiracy Island Charter, its initial unpopularity during its one month of purchasabilitiy, and then its extreme synergy with the Actually Ed the Undying ascension just two months later
what
You might have been joking, but there have been actual publications talking about game currency markets. The hyperinflation that happened in Gaia Online got a bonafide mention in an economics textbook. Like, there is a lot of actual economics that you can explore using game currencies.
When COVID started, someone on tumblr wrote up a post about how there was a pandemic in a game that bugged and became uncontrollably viral and the player reactions were pretty much a study on viral spread in a population and how people react. Some players were trying their best to stop it and offering aid, others said it was a hoax or deliberately infected villages. Apparently the bugged pandemic was only stopped when the game rewound the whole event back to before it even happened. Which is, uh, not comforting for us in the real world.
@@jessical4866 That was World of Warcraft, if I'm not mistaken! There were legit epidemiological studies written about that incident because it was, in a way, one of the most realistic pandemic simulations you could get.
I was confused, saw Simone, and then suddenly was not confused.
I haven't logged onto Neopets in a decade but it still occupies like 30% of my brain, thank you for an excuse to indulge my childhood hyperfixation
God same
i too havent logged in years, but i forgot my password, and they always ask my age, but i didnt put my real age on the time now im kind of stuck on the login screen, plus the email associated ive lost too...
very sad...
Same. Im too buuthurt to ever log in again.
good luck, I'm addicted again like it's 2006🙄 minus all the flash games. It's funny coming back as an adult cause I actually understand how to save money now haha
Your account is almost certainly either deleted (they sweep through and delete inactive accounts every few years) or was hacked into if you had anything good by now.
Mine is 11 years old but I log in every year or so to make sure it doesn’t get deleted in a sweep.
I spent years on Neopet's pound chat trying to break into UC trading. Trying to trade a pet for an UC was down to pure luck. You needed the right pet, the right user and to be there at the right time. You could be trading the same pet for months, finally get an UC and find you can't go any further and so you downgrade hoping another pet will get you a better UC and the cycle repeats. Those who couldn't take it anymore would trade for something else and quit, or just give away their UC/UC worthy pets.
I never understood why Neopets didn't re-introduce UC's to combat the black market trading that they knew was going on. Before I stopped playing knowing if an UC was 'legit' had become so hard to tell that users would encourage each other to ignore anything that looked off and not to report any UC, for fear that several could be deleted alongside ones reported. That's not a healthy mindset for your community and something should've been done far sooner. If they really do reintroduce UC's then I might re-join the site again.
Wtf is a UC
@@parimabartender It just stands for unconverted, as in unconverted pets but the latter is a bit of a mouthful so it's commonly abbreviated by those trading pets. :)
I normally provide context when using abbreviations but with the subject of the video being about unconverted pets, I guess I forgot.
As someone who's been an active Neopets trader for a few years (and wrote a few r/hobbydrama posts about the subject that you might have run into while researching) I can tell you that the next big boom is going to be real-word and real-name pets. If you can make any neopet into a UC now, well, then wouldn't you just want the absolutely PERFECT name for them?
Though to be honest, some of the charm of UCs was always just the ones with weird, early 2000's style names; I used to have my eyes set on a UC Faerie Meerca named "coolwhip81" because it was just so funny.
And RIP in Peace bigjohnswife; he gave me a UC Desert Aisha that was UNDOUBTEDLY hacked but like, he was a total bro and is part of the reason we're now allowed to talk about being LGBT+ on the site.
thank you for your information!
Wait you can't just leave it there. Explain the LGBT+ thing
@@nekonyx The short version is that, over the holidays, a player who referred to himself as "Big John's Wife (male)" ran an event on the Pound Chat called Wifemas, in which each day he and a friend would give out UCs. Some of these adoption games included things like adopting out a UC Tyranian Quiggle he referred to being a "chest growth" that Big John had gotten surgically removed (a joking analogy for top surgery) or having users create a customization using white, blue, and pink (trans flag) to celebrate a UC Sponge Kiko drinking a strange potion (an item which changes your pet's gender).
Discussing any content relating to LGBT identity was against site rules and could result in being silenced on the boards, either temporarily or indefinitely. This is a bit strange since they added an "Other" gender option for players recently, but the forums have always been very outdated. bigjohnswife got silenced for 48 hours for posting "I'm gray and I can't do math" (yes, gray as in the color), leading the Pound Chat to rally with pride flag signatures and supportive messages.
And, surprisingly, staff listened! The next day they posted an editorial explaining that they would be changing the filters. We are now allowed to say words like gay, transgender, lesbian, queer, and many others on the forums and on custom webpages. We can talk about our experiences and our cool LGBT neopet OCs!
Yeah now I'm curious about the bigjohnswife gay and trans rights movement
@@nekonyx there’s a reddit post on r/hobbydrama
as someone that witnessed the my_first_uc drama go down, you forgot to mention that the way they were doing this was by clicking a link. by clicking a link you could convert and unconvert any pets you wanted. it was like changing a switch from "uc=false" to "uc=true", and the pets didn't have to be on your account either, and it wasn't restricted to staff or admins
then the staff said they took care of it, then a few days later, someone ELSE showed up with another UC only hours old, saying the link had just been changed, not even password protected or anything, and they had to fix that up AGAIN
it was great. i hope the uc economy tanks :D
me too, the uc economy thing is pure toxicity
You could (un)convert other people's pets? I'm surprised there weren't more issues with "my 9001 USD UC neopet go converted overnight! HALP"
I hope UCs are completely eradicated and nobody can ever have one ever again
Neopets guild drama exploded my friend group in the 6th grade, and it's oddly satisfying to learn that the site continued to be a force of chaos and madness this entire time.
Just realized I only have a vague idea of what neopets is
Heard Neopets once or twice in my 13 years of internet usage, never knew what it was until today. Thank God I never took part in it.
Nintendogs meets Farmville?
@@MV96_ i wouldnt realy compare it to farmville
unless your talking about the Habitarium (RIP)
I played it a lot 15-18 years or so ago, when I was 9-12 approximately. I had no idea about this side of it. I just liked to sell stuff in my shop, play games and trade stocks.
I want the words “giving pets to the masses is praxis” tattooed on me
Step 1: Virtual money and resource are fake and should be distributed freely.
Step 2: Maybe real money and resource are also kind of fake and should be distributed freely??
@@Kirbyoto2098 There is a problem with step 2 in that while the money is technically just a representation of the value of resources, resources themselves are definitely not infinite. As many people found out 100 years ago.
love how you skipped scientologist but cc picks it up
back in the day i had a space-brush Xenu and a lava-brush Thetan
They were sponsored by scientology?
@@gronklevlonkle1717 They were owned by Scientologists for a period.
@@brynstarre I thought they were just investors? They didn’t own neopets. But I think they had to appease them to a degree so it’s kind of similar.
My first Neopet was a Jub-Jub named Jango.
...I was very excited for Episode II to come out as a child.
I can’t believe you forgot to mention a staff member also had a new uc that was too young
wow
What does that even mean? I nevet played Neopets
@@billblaski9523 so before 2007 all the pets had different art work, but they changed it to standardize the pets poses so they could wear clothes. Some of that art work was very unique and loved, so you had the option to keep the old art, but the pet couldn’t wear clothes. The new pets are “converted” to the new style, the old ones are “unconverted”. Once they converted the art, all new pets were made in the new art. Basically the pet had to be made before 2007 for it to have the old art, but a staff member had an unconverted pet that was around 4-5 years too young to be unconverted.
with how much early 2000s nostalgia is booming rn (and becoming cool and vintage for the children) i think neopets is going to get a ton of new users and i wonder how all this will shake out with that in mind
I wonder if that idea of recognizing that an older userbase exists and still wanting to give kids something more approachable for newer generations is what prompted the Webkinz site split with the new 3D models, since iirc they planned to keep up the old site too
Yeah, Webkinz Classic still exists. Whether or not the new 3D models are nightmare fuel for existing users seems super hit-or-miss, and leaving Classic available allows their old userbase not to feel alienated by the change (and by proxy, keep them spending money on the site & plushies which will probably easily pay for servers and other site admin costs and then some).
Oh i didn't hear about that that's great! Yeah honestly imo if it's not broke don't fix it I can maybe see where kids and video games is an area you feel compelled to update graphics but so many times a website changes design for no apparent reason to something not objectively better when a lot of ppl were absolutely fine with the old version
I played Neopets as a kid, but I feel like everything I've heard about it for years just makes my jaw drop! Great video and such an interesting topic! Loved the voiceovers as well.
Thank you Claire!!
The rarest Neopet in the world is a drawing I did of a Moehog that's still in my parents' attic somewhere.
immediately taking me back to farming for jelly and omelets to feed my neopets every day, all while this kerfuffle was going down
thanks, simone
huh. So this is what happens when I don't play neopets for a year
This is what happens when i don't play for 18
I was 9 or 10 when the conversion happened. I had finally earned enough for the baby paintbrush. Learning that my baby gelert would be in the same stock pose for customization purposes was a slap to the face. Thank you for reminding me of this pain
“It’ll always be a welcoming place for kids, for sure.”
The black market still flourishes to this day, their paid cosmetics are heavily gambling based, site security is still garbage, the site still jumps between converted and unconverted pages, constant release of artificially scarce items/cosmetics, and their most active players spend most of their time trying to exploiting the less knowledgeable (price gouging, lowballing, etc).
The main thing that drew kids to the site (pets, the immersive world, and flash games) are all partially inactive due to the death of flash.
I still play the game, but that’s because I’ve been around long enough to know what’s a scam and what isn’t. There’s no way I’d consider recommending it to my child, or any other in its state today.
The Neopets team have historically been extremely slow to adapt to changing times and circumstances. Imagine where the site could’ve been if THEY monetized the UCs all these years instead of the black market, or if they had the site converted and ready for the death of flash that was telegraphed since like 2017?
uhhhh as an old neopets head not only am i impressed by the depth with which you covered the history (most "outside" neopets coverage is not good) but you actually told me something i didn't know! can't believe i finally managed to check out of neopets to the degree that this whole scandal flew completely over my head, lmao. I'M FINALLY FREE
“They were also figuring out how to exploit their own economy”
*Gaia Online cackles in the distance*
I'd argue Gaia was way worse. I quit BECAUSE of their economy.
Meanwhile, in the world of maplestory...
Oh my gosh, a neopets video with Simone and a Last Unicorn reference before the one minute mark, I am incredibly catered to, thank you, Polygon.
I think it’s important to mention that Neopets was not originally geared towards children. It was created by and for college students. It wasn’t marketed to kids until it was sold.
The main player base was and always will be adults.
Simone and Neopets, my two favorite online personalities.
I thought I knew about all the neopets scandals but I didn't even know "UCs" were a thing. Wow. Wow.
The soup kitchen and great Omlette were quite the nostalgia bombs.
I remember my first pet being a Xweetox. I’d always thought it had an awesome design.
The Soup Kitchen was the BIGGEST flashback for me when I made my new account! - Simone
Simone says "immersive advertising" and an ad runs.
Simone says "currency" and a credit card ad runs.
😲
do you ever find out information and instantly know that it’s something you’re gonna be info-dumping to people about for weeks because this video is that
She didn't even mention the Scientology connection!
@@IamNumberE excuse me WHAT
She did mention it, briefly. Doug Dohring's a scientologist, and he owned neopets for a few years.
12:23 "Giving pets is praxis" KING
I wonder what Karina's thoughts are on the Neopets black market
I’m surprised she hasn’t mentioned before
Karina is clearly a neopets kingpin
Neopets is one of those things I understand less the more I learn about it.
Is this about karina from drawfee buying all the Harris chairs
I literally was about to say this 😂
Jesus Christ, why do all my interests cross over like this?
Excellent video, thank you for killing me with "imagine if a twitter update did this to your dog."
finally some real news
Man, I'm glad I clicked on this. My experience in this rabbit hole was about the stage of "I know what an Unconverted pet is, but I'm not interesting in trying to 'get' one". I didn't realise TNT would try and restore *every* pet in a trade chain if something illegal happened.
I have no idea what is happening but I am immensely invested
oh my god, i somehow had no idea all that black market trading was happening until this video. i was aware people wanted good names and rare pets, but i didn't know it went to that extent. i was just doing my dailies while all of that went down and i had no clue.
it's also really wild that it's possible to make a video about weird things going on on neopets without even mentioning the scientologists
i still remember being late to dinner in 200X, because i was seconds away from winning a pirate paintbrush in an auction (on-site) and then rode that adrenaline high through the rest of the evening. shoutout to my pirate zafara
noice
AAAAHHH SIMONE IS TALKING ABOUT NEOPETS ALERT SIMONE IS TALKING ABOUT NEOPETS
I remember really wanting a Darigan Techo and being so heartbroken by how badly the art ruined them, I was so close to finally affording that paintbrush when the conversion happened and ended up quitting the game.
I just don't really like the darigan techo that much, but my least favorite converted pet is rthe Halloween Zafara
I saw this notification and instantly thought: wtf, hell yeah, what
I played Neopets as a kid around... 2005-2008 maybe? I remembering logging in later and seeing the art was different and was like "huh ok". I had no idea any of this was happening.
I never knew the black market for an online video game about animals was thriving that much
Oh fuck yeah. Used to slang from time to time… people made LOADS of money.
Same sentence could also fit for Animal Crossing New Horizons.
you'd be surprised, i traded regular currency for Cash in grand chase back in time, i think i traded like 1million np
Lmao I've bought 10 million np before. This was back when they were cheap in the black market.
when Simone said "To understand why this happened," I was fully expecting it to launch into an ep of The Big Picture
The end of this video talking about people maybe going back to trading for better reasons makes me think of a line from a song sung about a different brand of collectable digital pets. "Why catch them all if you can't keep the ones that you love?"
i haven't gotten more than 2 seconds into this video and i'm already so excited about it
edit: it was even better than i imagined thank you simone for my life
I know nothing about neopets but you'd be a fool of you thought I wasn't going to watch this at least 5 times.
I appreciate this!!!
Now you know a few obscure things about neopets!!
@@rjs3493 indeed.
I was going to make a joke about all this commotion happening over what is essentially a bunch of .jpeg’s but then I remembered NFT’s exist so I guess the take away here is the more things change the more they stay the same.
Damn, I played back in the early 00s, if I could remember my login info I'd probably have a few UCs...
Oh don't worry, some one has definitely hacked your account and sold them by now if they weren't deleted due to a large data breach lol *rolls eyes at black market*. If you remember the exact name of your account or pets, I could do a search for you
I am suddenly overcome with anxiety wondering how my 19 year old kacheek is doing on an account I lost the login info for in 2003
I thiiiiink that account is old enough to have been purged from the site. :(
Rest in Neopeace
whoever made the forgotten realms reference with Drizzt I am so happy to see it
Simone Noir: an intriguing tale of nostalgic mystery
I wonder how my neopets are doing... the ones I adopted in 4th grade back in 2001 lol
They are dying, but they will never die.
@@polygon please don't remind me...
@@polygon Oh God, do you think that's what's happening to my Nintendogs too?
If your account still exists. Sadly they wiped several inactive accounts.
I've been playing for over 13 years, stopped playing like 5 years ago I think. Think I re-logged in a few months back, still got my account thank goodness. Miss Key Quest the most on it though, loved playing it. Looked in my safety box and was like, wow, more than 7,000+ items XD I forgot where I got most of it all.
I would like everyone to appreciate with me the subtle brilliance of surreptitiously dragging the chair out from in front of the greenscreen. Truly a fantastic moment
That last shot of sliding the chair out of frame has big The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals "Should we take these chairs?" energy and I love it.
I'm a big neopets fan and even I could barely understand this video, the neopets economy is a fickle thing. Surprised you didn't mention that 80% of the site isn't even working right now because it all ran on flash, and we have no idea when/if they'll actually be able to restore it
That.. Was surprisingly interesting for a video on the economy of a site I've never used.
this is what I strive for! -simone
I've always wondered about people saying that games need to be new and modern for kids to be interested in them. At least for me as a kid, every game I touched was cool as hell, regardless of it's actual quality. Kids don't even know what new is most of the time; for them everything is always new. So an older game that is really different from anything else out there rn is still gonna be something interesting to them, the real challenge is that they might not get as much exposure to the game as they would have during it's heyday.
As a child my older sister, who was probably 14 at the time would send out fake emails and messages claiming to be from the neopets team, to obtain the passwords of the kids who fell for it. She would then rinse the account for all its neopoints and worthwhile items. She was very good at this and as a result me and my cousins all had millions of neopoints, letting us buy all the rare stuff we wanted. In hindsight it was kind of an awful thing to do but also very funny.
Pretty mean but i gotta respect the hustle
As I always say, wrong is wrong, you can't make it right. Being a gamer I take stuff like this seriously. I don't see how people can not have a conscious about stuff like that. People work hard for their items, good at the game they play, etc. Then people like your sister come along and think it's ok to take advantage of people and even you think it's funny! Basically, you all were cheating the system, couldn't even play it correctly. Meaning you don't even know legit how to earn your own stuff and play fair. You wouldn't be able to make that much, that's why you stole from others. A bunch of thieves is what you are. :/ -_-
Already knew about a good chunk of this as an active neopets user, but I will happily watch Simone's presentation over and over again
I love how simone videos just progressively get weirder and weirder and I AM H E R E FOR IT
Someone has to step up and... UNRAVEL these issues.
I alway love hearing crazy stories about the neopets website, and i also love taking any opportunity to say the darkest farie is a fun game
I'm SO glad the new UC drama is becoming a mainstream topic of discussion, as a Neopets player for around 16 years, it just makes me happy that more people are becoming aware of the craziness that is this website
Thank you for the punch back into my childhood.
can't believe you didn't interview Karina Drawfee for this
The nostalgia HIT me this video 😩, I think I made like 10+ accounts cause I kept forgetting my usernames or passwords 😭
While it’s not directly related, I’m ready for an update video on Neopets and the NFT drama with Neopets Metaverse!
Wow, I thought this was gonna touch on the Scientology thing a lot more than it actually did. Literally everything I've heard about Neopets in the last 3 years is just wild.
I really hope the Drawfee crew finds this video
I didn't know there was a history of neopets but I'm here for it
The internet will always surprise me with the stories that come up.
The voice acting is awesome too. You all are fantastic!
Oh man, I remember seeing either a tumblr or reddit post about some guy who ran a Neopets blackmarket operation when he was younger, it was crazy!
Ah yes, the "pound chat"... exactly what I imagined from the name.
Its were all the toxic people on Neopets are dropped off because the rest of the community doesn't want them anymore XD
I've literally been saving up neopoints for about 8 years now just in case paintbrushes ever became a real thing again. The possibility of UCs coming back makes me so happy ;w;
Wairt paintbrushes donn't exist *looks at my christmas aisha* EXPLAIN THIS
As someone on ground 0 of this whole mess I can say happily that the list pets are a-okay, big John was the true hero of both the UC crisis and us being allowed to say were gay on neo finally, and that this is perhaps the first okay PR Stephanie has done since becoming brand manager (despite being a plant in the job by her dad). Also to be clear the “tool” to unconvert was literally a URL you typed in with the pets name that basically equated to “pet name = make uc”. Just a single unprotected magic url not locked behind any kind of admin tools that anyone who had it could use.
Controversy about niche topics is the kind of content that is just so up my alley. I've never even played but im fully invested now
I'm excited for a post-scarcity neopet utopia
During this video I went to see what Neopets games are available and am currently playing Hasee Bounce and IceCream Machine. Good times...good times...
as someone who converted their halloween loup, not fully understanding that it was permanent due to my child brain, ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT. CONVERSION IS SUFFERING
Thanks for this one, Simone! I haven’t played in YEARS but I’d been hearing about ~something~ happening with Neopets... this broke it down in a very interesting and digestible way!
Boy these online people sound a lot like Clayton, Josh, and Jenna
And the old timey person who sounds like pat but i guess that's not as surprising
the way i saw simone + neopets and clicked so fast
Today on topics I know nothing about, never intended to learn but will sit glued to a screen to take in every single word of
I used to look through that list of jpegs ALL the time when i was a kid, pull out a piece of printer paper and a pencil and just draw them. Loved them sooooo much! RIP childhood :')