Let me start this out by saying that I was not a "cool kid" growing up by any means. My idea of "cool" was staying up late and watching the Ink and Paint Club on Vault Disney or running around the tennis court in my grandparents neighborhood pretending to be some rare breed of dog from my dog breed encyclopedia. As I got a little older and the internet became commonplace, my "cool" ways migrated to the world wide web. And with that, it didn't take long before I discovered Neopets. It was then that I was right in my virtual home with every other misfit kid that found comfort behind the computer screen.
Customizable pets, shopping, games, chat rooms, a trading post, faeries, a pound, a battledome, hell even the stock market was there — Neopets had it all. Why even leave the computer chair and go out into the real world, when you had access to all of this amazing stuff as a 13-year-old kid? In all honesty though, my years (yes, years) spent on Neopets really taught me a lot. From the ages of 12 to 17, I regularly spent time on Neopets. You could pretty much say that the majority of my high school years were spent on that website. And that's why I would even go as far as to say that it had a hand in raising me.
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If you were anything like me, you totally understand what I mean. There was a huge difference between just having an account on Neopets and literally having the website consume your young soul. Obviously, with me... it was the latter.
So, I thought it would be fun to go down memory lane a little bit and to compile a list of all the things that I did learn thanks to the wonderful world of Neopets. I'll never forget my time with you.
1. Responsibility
The main concept to the website was, you better take care of your pets. In the Neopets world, they never died but they got to the point of "dying." And since I never wanted to see a pet of mine looking like the crypt keeper with fur, I regularly fed them. This meant scooping up free omelets at the giant omellete in Tyrannia or hoping I would win something good at the Tombola.
Not only were you responsible for feeding your pets, if they got sick they would need the proper medicine or treatment to be healed. The maximum amount of pets that you could have was four and if you couldn't take care of four pets, then you shouldn't own them. Of course I had multiple accounts and four pets on each, but since I was millionaire status in the world of Neopia for awhile, it was doable.
2. The Art of Haggling
On Neopets, you could open up your own shop and sell whatever you wanted or you could also shop at the specific shops that they had around Neopia. In addition, Neopets had an amazing thing called the trading post. If you had anything super expensive that you wanted Neopoints or additional items in exchange for, it had to be done through the trading post because shops had a price maximum for items sold. This maximum price was far less than what many items were worth in Neopia.
The trading post was awesome because you could say what you wanted for of items and then people could offer you something crappy and hope you'd be an idiot and accept or they could try to give you what you wanted.
It was always like Christmas when you had a new offer on your lot! But then 75% of the time, it would be a stupid volcanic rock or a bottle of sand. With a little effort and a little time though, you'd eventually get what you wanted or pretty close to it for your items.
3. Saving Money
The bank was one of the hottest spots on Neopets. I remember when I first became a millionaire on the website (thanks to finding a super expensive petpetpet at the Money Tree), I headed straight to the bank to store my Neopoints and to gain interest on my wins. After time, my one million neopoints became two million and with careful calculations and making smart decisions, I was able to have three different accounts, all with four decently painted pets and a pretty hefty petpet collection!
Also, I never kept more than around 5,000 neopoints out at once just out of fear that the pant devil would come and steal it away. In real life, these are called thieves and Neopets tried to teach the valuable lesson that theives do exist.
4. Making Friends
Some people might get a kick out of this one, but I met some amazing people during my time on Neopets. Some of the online friendships that I cultivated helped me out tremendously throughout high school when I didn't have any "real life" friends. We bonded over common interests, whether it was our favorite band, issues we were having in school, or something Neopets related.
Many of them, I have no idea where they ended up today but I know they are all probably doing amazing things with their lives. I owe all of them a huge thank you, wherever they are.
5. Basic HTML
Before MySpace page customization, there was Neopets customization. I remember when people thought they knew it all when it came to MySpace layouts, I quickly corrected them since I had around two years (woo hoo!) of additional basic HTML coding experience thanks to Neopets.
Making my shop look nice, my pets pages, my userlookup...I was a pro. A pro at taking a pre-made layout and customizing it, but hey a pro in my own right. "<img src="">" will always be my favorite HTML code thanks to Neopets.
6. Loss
The most devastating thing of all that Neopets taught me was loss. Not the loss of pets dying or anything like that, but getting your accounts hacked. I have had hundreds, maybe thousands of online accounts of some kind throughout the years, but never have I had any type hacked more than a Neopets account.
The first time it got me was when I was pretty new to Neopets, like two months and logged into a fake login screen that appeared in a storefront. Nicola Dewhurst, an Eminem fan from Great Britain had hacked my account and took it over like it was no big deal. Thankfully, I only had a few thousand neopoints and none of my pets were anything too great.
However, I ended up having a certain Neopets account for years that was my main account. I kept all of my neopoints and my best painted pets in this account, as well as my collections and pretty much everything I didn't want to lose in the Neopets world. It was a very sad day when I tried to log into this account about three years ago (yes, do the math...three years ago, I was 24 and still logging into my Neopets account on occasion). I probably hadn't been on in at least 6 months. At this point I would get on from time to time just to see what the site was up to or play some games.
This day though, I wasn't locked out of my account, but when I did get into it, I saw that all of my painted pets were gone, all of my neopoints were gone, my entire petpet collection was gone and anything and everything else that had any type of value in my account...was gone as well. This was the last time I would ever get on Neopets.
