Neopets Let Me Be A Gay Kid Online
This week, the Digg staff is celebrating the humble web game. Given that we're in the final throes of summer — when everyone is seemingly on vacation and things seem a little sleepy — there might not be a better time to revisit the Golden Age Of Internet Time Wasting.
When I was a little kid, I loved "Sailor Moon." In a home video I recently found, 4-year-old-me can be seen running back from the ice cream truck and running at my dad who is holding our camcorder. "Daddy, look at what I got!" I exclaimed and held up my "Sailor Moon" ice cream, victorious.
I never stopped loving "Sailor Moon," but at a certain point, I wasn't as loud about it. At a certain age other boys started commenting or making fun of my more girly interests.
I can't recall a specific time that it happened, but I can recall the general sentiment: "Why do you always choose Kirby in 'Super Smash'?", "Is this your Pink Power Ranger toy?"
Years later I would be able to talk about these experiences on platforms like Gay Twitter, an online community of gay people who often post similar stories in hopes of finding those who relate. But until then, I'd hide that stuff. I would choose different characters for "Smash" and I'd make my mom get me some Blue Ranger toys. As I got a little older and spent more time on the internet, I discovered that I could express my interests in ways that would be free from snickers of the neighborhood boys. That's when I found Neopets — it wasn't Gay Twitter, but for a gay preteen craving connection, it was something.
Neopets was a big part of my childhood as well as about 71 million other kids from my generation. If you've never heard of it, it's a text and still image combination of Pokémon and The Sims. You create adorable virtual pets and care for them by playing little games and earning Neopoints.
My favorite Neopet was Lupe, a blue dog with a handkerchief who just always seemed like he was ready to cuddle on the couch or go find a child trapped in a well. My long term goal for Neopets to get Lupe a Baby Paint Brush. Paint Brushes in Neopets are used to change the appearance of your pet and more than anything, I wanted to turn my Lupe into a puppy.
The Baby Brush is one of the most expensive items in the game, so I spent a lot of time trying to save money. I'd play a lot of my favorite games like "Faerie Cloud Racers" or "Warf Rescue" over and over to try and collect the most Neopoints I could. I'd sell majority of my items and deposit my earnings into a bank account so it accumulate interest. I was on a mission.
Neopets was not something I talked about in the classroom. I don't think talking about a Baby Brush or "Faeire Cloud Racers" would have gone down well with the kids at school. The site is brightly colored and cute, not something a preteen boy could openly take interest in. In fact, as a blossoming gay boy, playing with virtual pets was one of the only ways I could express my more feminine interests. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy Line Rider or Tanks, it was that I could talk about those to anyone, Neopets was more exclusive; more exciting.
Years before that door opened or even before I discovered my sexuality, Neopets was a place of possibility; a window into another world.
Although none of my friends were with me when I was on Neopets, I didn't play alone. One of my closest friends, Jennifer, was my partner in crime. From basically the second we got home from school until our families called us for dinner we'd be on the phone, simultaneously playing together. Neopets isn't really a cooperative game, in fact you barely have interaction with other players, but that didn't stop us. We'd talk the entire time we were on the site together: "What are you playing?", "Do you want to play Kass Basher?", "Let's go do the Wheel of Excitement!"
It wasn't about one particular activity or game, but rather, it was about having that feminine space with Jennifer that I couldn't get anywhere else. For the most part, Neopets was run by girls who also saw it as a space for their creativity and expression. As writer Nicole Carpenter writes for Variety, some young women used Neopets during their childhood as a way of teaching themselves skills that are often designated for men: they'd learn coding for their profile pages or learn about business through the in-game stock market system.
Jen and I got to share this space free from the cursed straight boys of our school. She liked that I wasn't mean and rowdy like other boys and I was happy that she wouldn't say a word when I brought up cutesy things like the Baby Lupe.
Looking back, it's strange to imagine myself so invested in the lives of these inanimate images — at least in Pokémon there's movement. But really, it was just nice to get out of the virtual closet. I think this is a common experience for gay men, and LGBT people more broadly. We couldn't explore our interests and identities in real life so we did it online, whether that be on Neopets or in gay chat rooms.
After about a year or two of consistently playing Neopets, Jen and I started to outgrow it. Taking an interest in more complex activities, we started "RuneScape" accounts together and started a new adventure. A few months after we stopped playing, I logged back on to Neopets. I didn't play anything or even check on my pets. Instead I went to the Money Tree, located right in the middle of Neopia Central. At the Money Tree, players can either claim a random prize or donate items or Neopoints that will be given to a player.
I donated all of Neopoints that I was saving for my Baby Brush to some player that I will never know. I couldn't tell you why I went back to give away all my hard earned points, but looking at it now, I like to think I was passing on the torch. Neopets had been a sanctuary for me, and maybe it could provide that for another gay boy out there. Whoever he is, I hope he ended up with enough Neopoints to finally buy the Baby Brush on my behalf. Or any brush he liked, I'm not picky.
