My desktop computer in 2009.
In 2003, I logged onto a little website called Neopets.com. I created shitty little pets with shitty little names. I loved them and fed them obsessively at the soup kitchen, for I was only a nine year old and Neopoints, banking, and becoming a Neoshop owner had no bearing on my will to keep my Neopets alive. Caring for them was an arduous task. I had to request permission from my parents to use the phone line to access the internet. Feeding took a total of seven clicks: explore tab > neopia bazaar > marketplace > soup kitchen > “feed your pets” > choose a pet > refresh > repeat. Each click took one to three minutes depending on the strength of the phone lines that day. Eventually, I moved on to more niche websites - kiddonet where I spent hours on doll creators, matmice where I trained myself to code.
My neopets profile. It used to have a special, animated cursor and a wood plank background. The song “The Sign” covered by Teen Hearts played in the background. No off or pause button. It was a time of chaos.
I lost my login and my original Neopets account but in 2006, at the age of 11, I went back to that website, just to see if it was still around. This time, older and wiser, I became interested in the ways that Neopets allowed for communication and customization. I was still too young for myspace and facebook wasn’t widely used or relevant to kids. I could use my newfound html skills to create a custom user profile. I could log onto the forums to chat with other tweens about both real world and Neopian problems. I still have this account today. It’s been untouched since around the age of 14, a capsule of who the internet allowed me to be, and a sort of badge of honor that I parade around at parties - proof that I was on the internet in the early 2000’s and that this relationship endures.
My 17.5 years badge. How many have they made? Who is the artist behind these, after all these years?
Constantly starving pets, broken games, and impossible logic puzzles aside, Neopets allowed me to dip my toes into the waters of developing an online persona, one that became preternaturally genderless, even before I knew what gender was. By sixth grade, we’d upgraded to high speed internet and my parents had installed a desktop computer and second router in my bedroom. I was able to spend hours online without getting in the way of incoming or outgoing calls. I spent most hours after school and on the weekends in the roleplaying forums, where players were required to speak as and also describe the actions of the characters they were embodying. There was a chaotic force behind these forums, as, if they remained inactive for more than twelve hours, Neopets would automatically delete these threads from existence. (That feature appears to be gone now). And the rules were strict - one had to be specific as to whether they were speaking in or out of character by labeling out-of-character talk as “OOC:” and because Neopets was at its core a website for children, there were intense censors watching out for any mention of violence, sex, or even romance.
The boards moved fast. You had to manually refresh to see if others had responded to or taken an action after your own. If you accidentally exited a thread, there were so many different role playing games going on at once that it was nearly impossible to get back.
One of the photos I used in describing various characters. Definitely saved from some far off myspace page or google search.
Crucially, Neopets served as the canvas on which I could begin to delineate the contours of my desired online identity. In this virtual realm, I assumed the moniker "Fin," a name that, in my twelve-year-old perception, exuded gender neutrality, fittingly described as "a boy's name that a girl could have too." I rarely played female characters in the Neoboards, instead opting for emo boys who wore eyeliner and black and pink stripes. Recurring themes on the Neopets forums included scenarios such as boarding school, gifted boarding school, werewolves, and shapeshifters, all of which revolved around the concept of identity, self-discovery, and transformative experiences.
No one ever asked my gender on Neopets. I was an online persona playing a number of online personas. I was free.
me, at some point, around that time
Having a space to create any representational identity, especially at a time when the internet was still heavily anonymous, no doubt allowed for a blossoming in expression that I am still experiencing waves of today. I want to use the word refining here, as I do think that the Neoboards allowed me to refine my online self before moving onto more traditional social online spheres such as tumblr or myspace.
I logged into the Neoboards today. In writing this newsletter, I posted in the forums for the first time in ten or so years. I asked if I was the only one who felt this way. I connected with a number of others who’d roleplayed at the same time as me - who gave neopets credit for either their first dipped toes into the realm of gender or for their understanding of romance and sexuality. A number of folks said they’d “pretended” to be the opposite gender but now realized it had been because they’d already been unsure about their identity. One person said they’d catfished someone, pretending to be a boy, and that when they finally met irl, it had turned out they’d catfished one another, neither were boys. They’d dated, regardless. “I credit neopets for my emerging sexuality,” they explained.
me, around the time I began making the move from roleplaying forums on neopets to tumblr
The roleplaying forums still exist, though it is mostly older players waxing nostalgia about the good ole days. When I talk to other people my age, the conversation of the “old internet” comes up fairly often. Today’s internet exists as a sort of secondary reality. When you are online, you are, for the most part, representing yourself rather than a character you’ve created. However, in the 2000s, it stood at a transitional juncture: emerging as a space not solely for communication but also for creative and experimental expression. Parents still advised children to employ pseudonyms, even on platforms like Myspace. The commonplace practice of divulging one's name, location, and age on online profiles felt distant on the horizon. Anonymity, especially among niche online communities, fostered an environment in which we unwittingly flexed a range of faculties—autonomy, creative writing skills, and gender expression among them.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Neopets let me be queer before I knew I was queer. Neopets let me be a boy and a girl and a lot of things in between. Neopets let me be a half-zebra half-emo kid at a boarding school in New England.
Thank you, Neopets, you little freak, you. You facilitated my early ventures into the corridors of identity, and for that, you will always remain a cherished memory.
This was the second of three installments on digital adolescence, gender, and art. Read the first newsletter here.
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