Neopets' black market pet controversy, explained 

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!

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

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

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.

Teddy Ruxbin talks, but he ain't no snitch

@@mildsoup8978 snitches get stitches

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

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

Making omelettes 😂

we want our cute images okay!

:'( 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

Zesty

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you Claire!!

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.

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

This is what happens when i don't play for 18

I'd argue Gaia was way worse. I quit BECAUSE of their economy.

Meanwhile, in the world of maplestory...

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.

The Soup Kitchen was the BIGGEST flashback for me when I made my new account! - Simone

I’m surprised she hasn’t mentioned before

Karina is clearly a neopets kingpin

I literally was about to say this 😂

Jesus Christ, why do all my interests cross over like this?

I just don't really like the darigan techo that much, but my least favorite converted pet is rthe Halloween Zafara

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.

noice

I appreciate this!!!

Now you know a few obscure things about neopets!!

@@rjs3493 indeed.

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. :/ -_-

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.

Someone has to step up and... UNRAVEL these issues.

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 thiiiiink that account is old enough to have been purged from the site. :(

Rest in Neopeace

this is what I strive for! -simone

Wairt paintbrushes donn't exist *looks at my christmas aisha* EXPLAIN THIS

Its were all the toxic people on Neopets are dropped off because the rest of the community doesn't want them anymore XD