The Most Cursed Section of GirlsGoGames 

A couple games were omitted from this retrospective; the ONRPG games (DOMO, Fly for Fun, Fairyland, Fiesta Online) were included in a version of the MMO tab that had a slightly different URL than the one I was pulling from, and so I didn’t realize they were there until it was too late. Stardoll isn’t in this video because 1. I intend to make a video about Stardoll eventually and 2. I have beef with Stardoll and would like to have to think about and look at it as little as possible. Finally, thank you all so much for 100k subscribers! This is a huge milestone for me and it means so much to me that, with your help, I was able to achieve this in just over a year of running this channel. Thank you all so much; I look forward to what the future has in store!

Li, as a full-on social mmo player since early 2000s (I was under ten then), I cannot emphase how important that last message was. Regardless of the game, regardless of the genre, as long as Internet and people with a goal to take advantage of someone exist, no one is safe. Back in 2005, I would play IMVU and drifted to OurWorld due to adults being incredibly inappropriate. I've had grown men (could of been anyone but I never encounter a woman doing such thing in my case) asking me my email to Skype with me. Now more than ever, we need to educate the newer (and older) generations the importance of not giving any information whatsoever. Even if they are elders, adults with bad intentions exists and will always.

GirlsGoGames was such a fun and charming flash game site...until 2014 when the Disney bootleg games took over. I actually miss browsing and playing games on there though.

i was constantly harassed as a kid on gaia. i remember a dude wanted to video chat and i said my webcam was broken and he sent a picture of himself pouting and hugging a pillow 💀

"you've exhausted everything, the coloring pages, the poker games, even *checkers*" *slowly closes my online checkers tab*

The implication that there was much less 'e-dating' on the moon had me cracking up laughing, so there's that

LI: SPEAK 🗣️🤯📢 I: LISTEN👂🏼💯🙏🏻

THE LISPEAKS LOGO EARRINGS ARE ICONIC OHHH YESS

Funfact! Panfu was way more popular than Club Penguin in some countries that didn't have access to Club Penguin (because of the language barrier). In Poland memes with Panfu characters swearing that came out after people discovered that polish swear words are not filtered in new servers became a big part of polish meme culture! It was also the first online game where I was banned when I was 8 lmao

I feel like im the only one that didn't open the mmo tab because I was terrified that if i lied about my age online I'd be banned from the internet 😭 (In my child mind the internet knows everything at all times, including the user)

hi, 37:15 was extremely cathartic to hear. I was groomed on instagram via, and this is stupid to write out, warrior cats role play. it started normal, then I was invited to an extremely sexual “clan”. I didn’t know what was going on, I was 12. I engaged in it because the people around me engaged in it. my mom found out and screamed at me. I remembered feeling so embarrassed that I internalized that moment forever. I was sexually assaulted by my then girlfriend at the age of 14. I never told anyone because I feared I would get yelled at. I let it happen so many times because I thought it was my fault. I love my mom, but im so, so angry that I was never put into therapy or told that I was *a victim*. I only went to therapy for the first time a year ago, and im an adult now. it felt very cathartic finally hearing my thoughts said by someone else. thank you.

the solution is comprehensive sex ed. teaching children about consent, and especially teaching them how to set boundaries, and how to recognize when they are uncomfortable and remove themselves from a situation. censorship causes more problems than it fixes and you cannot eliminate risk, but you CAN teach children how to navigate risk when they encounter it. i saw and experienced some pretty fucked up stuff on the internet as a kid, but, thankfully, i was never in any danger and i was never traumatized by it- entirely because my mom did such a good job instilling those lessons in me!

The section at the end reminded me of the genuinely deep club culture that existed on Animal Jam back in the day, with all the "dance parties" that people would host in their dens. Sometimes it was actually simple, innocent stuff, other times people were really exploiting the in-game animations for.. less than appropriate activities. It's kind of interesting that basically every kids MMO has an equivalent to that kind of culture, but at the same time it's super tragic.

babe wake up new li speaks video just dropped

There's no WAY we were gifted a girlsgogames video today. I can't tell you how often "Girls go boys? Boys Bo Bames?" plays in my noggin.

I still think about how lucky I am in life because of how often I have been in situations where predators were common and what an easy target I was. But then I get sad thinking that this is lucky, not the norm. It should be the norm and it pains me it isn't. The fact that the worst thing I experienced is one d pic when I was 13, and then a guy asking me to sleep with him when I was 16 turning 17 and he was 23. WHY IS THIS LUCKY!?!? It should be nothing! This world is so cruel.

I definitely was engaging in roleplay in a way I shouldn't as a 13 year old and when my parents found out they were rightfully upset. I wish they wouldve did better to explain why its dangerous instead of getting upset but honestly I bet they were just terrified to know their kid was potentially engaging with a grown ass man online. It BAFFLES me the sheer LACK of internet safety amongst younger people and how LITTLE parents are doing to protect their children. I'm coming up on an age where I'll probably adopt myself and I'm already thinking of all the ways I want to help educate them to be as safe as possible online. Its just... Man I'm so afraid for some of the current pre-teens and younger for the potential situations they might often be getting in. I didn't even think about how minecraft and roblox might be spaces for that since theyre so popular, I assumed moderation might be better but honestly it makes sense. Thank you for touching on the topic despite how rough it is, its important to continue to shed light on it if we ever hope to see change.

I don't want to say that Neopets has never had an issue with adults trying to exploit children, but i am SO glad my main internet game as a child did not allow me to even talk about finding a friend I made there somewhere else on the internet. The restrictions on the message boards and even PMs felt so narrow at the time, but it was definitely the right way to handle a large userbase of children.

the classism on ourworld was CRAZY, this one guy was making fun of me calling me a "noob" and being like 9 i didnt know what that meant but based on how mad he was when i said it back i thought it was a slur for YEARS. YEARS!! i thought i was going to get arrested!

5:10-6:54 had me nodding my head and snapping my fingers in agreement. actual poetry. summarizes it all perfectly. time is so fleeting, and there will never be another period of history like this ever again, and there is nothing we can do to return to it the way it once was. i'm being so brave about it though

ngl seeing panfu here hit me like a truck i used to be completely obsessed with it back in the early 2010s

I have no idea what made me this way, if it was the undiagnosed autism or what, but I never trusted people online. I got very few warnings from my parents and older siblings about stranger danger online, but I just knew creepy people existed and realised anyone could lie. So whenever I was hit with the "How old are you?" question I'd make them answer first. If they said 13, then I'd say I was 30 and that it would be creepy for me to keep talking to them. If they said 30, I said the same as before but in reverse. I really wish every kid would have been as paranoid as me, because it would save so many kids. I wish other kids would have been as "lucky" as me to have realised there's no guarantee that people are telling you the truth. I think my mom just taught me to be extra cautious in general and that carried over into internet safety.

I think the best solution to the problems you discussed here is for parents and educators to teach children what to look out for, and to foster an atmosphere of openness where kids feel safe telling trusted adults what’s going on in their lives. I think this type of education is especially needs to fall on schools, since like you mentioned not all parents are supportive and may do more harm than good monitoring their child’s internet use. I was slightly too old for a lot of these social sites as a kid, so instead I was taught about stranger danger and keeping myself safe irl. In particular, I learned a *lot* from classes led by my elementary school guidance counselor. You can’t fully protect children **CW** I was still abused by an older kid despite the good education I’d gotten, ** but I think that educational foundation did help me to stay safe overall

TW: Mention of grooming The last part of this video was wonderful. People don't usually spend much time talking about this aspect of these games intended for kids. Gaia Online was where I was groomed by a 30 year old when I was a teen. I'm 30 now and literally can't imagine doing what that person did. I want to encourage every kid: stop talking to that older, "cool" person you met online. They have literally no good reason to be forging a close friendship with a child!

I've been looking for the game Maid Marian/Club Marian for a long while and just seeing it being discussed here was pretty shocking - thank you though. The only things I could remember about the game (which I played at around 8 years old and couldn't speak/read English yet) was, that you could have a car, you could chat with others and you could run around on some wooden bridges. So ... finding it just based on those things was pretty hard!

The last part of this video hit home so hard. I was on gaiaonline when I was 12, I had a group of friends I trusted and roleplayed (not cybering, mostly werewolf nonsense) with, for the most part, other teenagers. I was misrepresenting my age at the time, but like I said, I trusted these people! And then a 19 year old "friend" added me on Skype. I remember sitting in a call with his other, older friends while they discussed explicit things and asked if I was a "masochist", and proceeded to explain what it meant. I did eventually get out of that situation when my stepsister found out and told our parents, but if she hadn't, I can't imagine what could have happened. I want my kids to be able to do these things, but I also absolutely will not be giving them unfiltered access to the internet until they're at least 14, and with VERY clear understanding of what is and is not okay for people to say or ask of you online as a child.

that last section hit super close to home like damn you really put into words the horrific trauma i faced at the hands of an unfiltered internet access and i had never even played or heard of any of these games. i ended up making my first tumblr account when i was like 9 because i thought i was so cool and mature for knowing about all this stuff that was clearly meant for people older than me and even when my internet access was eventually filtered by my parents the damage had already been done (and would continue to be done)... man. it fills me with the same sense of hopelessness to see the same thing happening to kids over & over again online and i too wish there was some concrete way to do something about it without just eradicating every space specifically for children bc those are sorely needed too. anyway: amazing video, love your stuff, sorry for the super long comment lol

The closing message genuinely had my eyes watering,full stop. As an autistic queer kid growing up I had COMPLETELY unrestricted internet access and enjoyed things such as roleplaying(still do!) A lot. But it led to a severe reliance on technology for actual function as an individual, and being raised in a southern area, I felt that the internet was the only place I could be myself or speak my mind. And disgusting people took advantage of it,they would target the only safespaces kids raised like me had to such a point we had to stop playing the only places we really had to express ourselves when we were so restricted in our daily life. It's vile, and it's cruel,I don't even have the ability to communicate heavy emotions outside of written form anymore due to how severely the internet and spaces like these unfortunately traumatized me. It really resonated to hear you talk about how it will always happen and how trapping it is to try and make kid centric spaces that can't be exploited,I mean you can't ID children,so now what? Put in systems which we know have been proven to fail? Or just sacrifice sheltered kids from being able to have some sense of freedom? It's really disheartening to think about, but hearing you discuss it was something I needed to hear. Thank you,Li.

You're right. Any iteration of Panfu these days is just a private server ran by... some very passionate players pretending they own the IP. The truth is, Goodbeans (the company who owned Panfu) filed for bankrupcy at some point, so whoever is running around claiming they are the ''real'' Panfu team is confident they won't get sued. This game was the biggest online experience for me, far surpassing Club Penguin. It was *very* big in some countries, calling it "European Club Penguin" wouldn't be a big stretch. I'm not sure what freezing players in place for a minute was referencing, but Panfu had a variety of throwable abilities. Freezing players for a few seconds was a thing as well as covering them in slime, sending them hearts etc. It was a lovely, warm experience for me. Huge on role-play drama, that's for sure! The story felt really cool too, for the 9 year old me at least. I remember all the quest lines so vividly and how infuriating it was sometimes having to wait 3 days at a time to progress. Once I got a bit older and my English got better I also started religiously playing CP, but it didn't hit the same. Either way, love both of these games a lot. Childhood!

The jumpscare hearing Zwinky mentioned… took the wind right out me.

thank you so much for the end of this video. nostalgia is fun and all, but what’s more important is learning how the past failed us, and applying that to the present to end the cycles of trauma we’re all caught up in. 💖

I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR ANYTHING ABOUT SWITCHIN MMO FOR YEARS NOW HOLY SHIT!!! I used to play it when I was 8-9 (i don’t remember) but I have that game to thank helping me get better at typing and reading! I’ve never seen or heard anyone talk about it and I’ve been trying to find anyone who even knew about it!! I didn’t remember the game name but I have vivid memories about playing it UGH! Thank you!! Holy shit Fun fact: there was this one map that took place in the sky on a floating platform and there was this one area in the top left corner where you could walk out a little ways and you’d be standing on nothing. Only one person was able to do it at a time and everyone else who’d try to do the same would fall down while someone else is on the invisible platform. It kind of blew my mind as a child.

Audition Online! I remember being a young kid and seeing my older cousins go absolutely HAM on their keyboards (hands literally flying everywhere as fast as humanly possible), never knew it was actually a MMO since I mostly saw the dance section.

TW: child grooming and exploitation (in general terms) The last section of your video REALLY resonated with me. I’m a victim of grooming myself, and I’m often caught in the catch-22 of wanting measures to stop child predators to be put in place online, versus knowing that those same measures would likely negatively effect LGBT+ people, and LGBT+ children in particular, negatively. Especially since being LGBT+ is often viewed as inherently sexual. I desperately want to protect kids from what I went through, but it seems impossible. It seems the best we can do is protect the children within our reach, to the best of our ability. But it’s a relief to hear someone else voice the helplessness I feel - almost like a bit of that helplessness has been lifted.

(this is related to the end of the vid lol) that entire section reminded me of when I was talking to my fiance about how I used to play on barbiegirls and would cyber with ppl when I wasnt even 10 and they stated and me in silent shock and asked if I was okay lmfao a lot of the things I went through growing up stemmed from this kind of behavior on badly moderated kids' sites, and even now I still discover how much it influenced the harmful patterns id continue until it reached a boiling point. it really is a cesspool and it hasn't gotten better since 2006.

34:28 I first discovered "throat" stuff on switchin MMO when i was 11. I didnt entirely understand it, and found the concept so incredibly alien... im like what?? my throat? why in my throat? thats not a pleasurable place..."

I'm glad you didn't shy away from the 'downer' topic, honestly. My feelings on it are very similar to yours, in that it's a very complicated situation and a lot of the obvious fixes are likely to get misused or just cause other problems. As a content creator myself with a fanbase that skews young, I've tried to instill good internet safety where I can: don't trust someone you don't actually know (having them added on discord is not knowing them), don't give out highly personal details about yourself, heed warnings and leave any situation the second you feel like you shouldn't be there. But I also know because I was that kid once too that it's very easy to feel like you're 'mature' enough and 'careful' enough that it doesn't apply to you. It just sucks all around and just because we don't have a neat simple fix for it doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it. Anyway I did play Dofus in high school and I found it so confusing that I never got out of the tutorial area.

God, this tickled the deepest parts of my brain. I can still remember the eerie feeling Maid Mariam gave me as a kid. It felt forbidden to play, honestly. ALSO OMG PANFU, I remember how my older cousin had to make my other cousin and I accounts, cause we didn’t even know nor understand the context of emails. Such great times, man. And with Dofus come shows too, actually. One with the same name and then Wakfu, which is more known.

05:04 Trigger warning: Absolutely FIRE, deep, emotional, gut-punching speech.

Tw grooming and end of video topics I just watched the end of the video and I have to say; this was one of the only times I cried over a RU-vid video deep dive because I completely understand this grief and helplessness over the problems with online safety. Yes it was a downer but it was 100% necessary. Every single person I know that is my age or older was groomed online. Kids deserve better.

related to the end part of the video i hope the people that were downplaying their experiences realize how bad the situation actually was so they can do some healing. i was kind of in the same boat for a while (although my experiences weren't from mmos) and when i finally realized how fucked up it was that those things happened to me, a series of realizations about who i am now as an adult hit me like a truck

Honestly I'm really glad my dad was a gamer because he ingrained so much internet safety from when I was little and made sure to sign off on any online social game I played / check the chat censorship level

im so glad you mentioned the stuff at the end, particularly the conundrum of kids not being able to tell their parents about something that happened online, because they knew they too would get told off for going on such games! MSP was a landmine for this sort of stuff, I remember a ''guy'' inviting me to his online room and I was told to do sitting emotes whilst he did a laid down emote (yuck!!!), which looking back obviously was something sexual! i must of been 7/8yrs old at the time and I thought it was a bit weird, and it led to me deleting that account. on one hand, ipad kids nowadays seem to be more tech savvy growing up than even gen z were, but there are so so so many more ways for today's kids to be preyed upon online. i don't really know what the solution is, my parents used to monitor my internet history but that made me feel like i lost alot of my privacy particularly when i became a teen. anyway, loved the vid

Li Speaks is my new safe RU-vidr. Literally all of her videos are calming and engaging enough for me to watch so I can calm myself when I'm having an anxiety attack. SwitchIn MMO: Are you sure about that. If you get anxiety attacks and you need a little extra help, write a list of videos, comfort items and maybe some comfort foods people can get for you or just for you to remember when you're having trouble thinking.

Trigger warning My experience with mmos in the early 2000’s had me so desensitized to what was happening that I thought it was normal. I ended up leaning into what was highly inappropriate behavior because of a lack of awareness supervision and ultimately ended up getting groomed pretty bad. I had it all from our world to imvu the pipeline to kik and Skype predators were all over the place! I was groomed and taught awful things by these men then the shame of what happened and what my parents would do had me silent the whole time. This cycle continued from middle school to high school. The worst was when I had a friend that borrowed my phone to talk to her “19yo” bf at the time we were in middle school. He would then text and call me interested in a sexual conversations as well. It ended with the cops being called when they found out he was in his 20’s and receiving inappropriate calls and photos from her and myself. Yuck! The unfiltered access these predators had was absolutely criminal! I’m both glad and sad that these spaces don’t exist anymore. As always parents should be aware and support their children when in need!

the national pride when a 2 second clip to represent the game has polish usernames present 💪

I always thought I played club panguin as a child but seeing panfu now I'm like "did I actually play just panfu and only assumed it had been club penguin because that's the one I kept hearing about as an adult"

TW: reference to some of the chat-based problems Li mentions toward the end I only had experience with one MMO when I was younger, and that was Build-a-Bear’s bearville. It had a chat feature, but it was extraordinarily limited in what you can say. And by extraordinarily limited, I mean that there were only set phrases/questions you could say. There were quite a few, so it wasn’t just “cool” or “nice job” or whatever, but in retrospect I imagine it was in part to curb some of the negative side effects of more open chatting with minors in these spaces. It’s unfortunate bc it really limited your socialization potential, but I imagine it also prevented a lot of worse outcomes

YOUUU YOU ARE THE SOURCE THAT FINALLY TOLD ME WHAT THAT GAME WHERE YOU COULD GO IN CAR AND TO CLUBS WAS. I NEVER COULD FIND ANYTHING ABOUT IT BUT THE MOMENT I SAW THE CHARACTER FROM IT ON YOUR THUMBNAIL I KNEW. HOLY SHEESH. HOLY SHEEHS.

Oh Panfu, my good old friend. I'm so happy that you mentioned it! I used to beg (like many others) for the "Golden panda" member ship and my friend getting it, didn't help (lol). English not being my native language, and me being a super shy kid definitely saved me from stuff (and for that I'm SO thankful). I also remember another game, Oloko. That game didn't last for very long (to my knowledge) but it was like Panfu but with rabbits.

I've been on the internet a long time. I was way too young. It's so disturbing the stuff I had to deal with. Thank you for talking about it. I know many have mentioned it but I feel like it's a topic that needs constant reminders as the internet becomes increasingly more popular. No matter the site you're on there will always be creeps.

FINALLY SOMEONE talks about Maid Marian! i personally have been researching this game! im so sure that The Moon Game and Marian Club was the most popular MMos back then, i remember making so many friends by playing that game! im glad someone finally brings it up again.

I honestly think that the best system of chat is what Animal Jam (now Animal Jam Classic) used. Of course, that doesnt mean things didnt happen, but the chat didnt even let you say the word bed or numbers. I remember doing family roleplays and having to say "Go to bead kids" and "My character is for years old" to bypass the filter (albeit for innocent reasons).

Also your look is absolutely iconic here it reminds me of fashion doll customs for some reason

The last bit...yeah. I've played some Sky: Children Of The Light recently, and even in that game - which doesn't let you message someone without being their friend first! - I've had multiple conversations where someone will bring up their age. Like, one specific time, this kid says "I'm 10, and people don't usually keep talking to me after I say that" and. I was shocked. Absolutely dumbfounded. I wanted to take them aside and explain how to be safe online, but. I was too stunned to be too serious, and just went "haha dw its okay but Don't Tell People Your Age." SCOTL is one of the friendliest communities I've seen, but. There's always gonna be creeps. It really worries me that kids are growing up thinking it's Totally Okay to just. Share your age and location like that.

(Cw relating to the last subject in the video) there's also the fact that kids witnessing all the cybering who don't fully understand the seriousness will spread it to other kids too - it was a good couple of decades ago now, but I'll always feel guilty about attempting some of the stuff I'd witnessed in less moderated chatrooms with a kid I'd made friends with on neopets :/ right after I sent the message, I got in trouble IRL for not doing homework and was banned off the PC for several weeks and by the time I got back he'd blocked me and I'd gotten a message from somebody else saying "hey this guy's been saying you sent him a gross message but nobody believes him, you're not like that :)" and even after that there was a good while where I thought I was... idk, cool? cause I knew stuff about this grown-up thing that not many other kids seemed to know much about, though I never pulled anything quite like that again. I do think it became something healthier after, not "cybering" but privately RPing as fictional characters with friends who were definitely my age, which I view more as... exploring sexuality in a safe space?

I was a very sheltered and vulnerable child, but I thankfully managed to escape the virtual world boom unscathed. It's kind of wild since I was playing Lord of the Rings Online as early as 11-13, and no one was ever anything but kind and helpful on that one. If only the real world had been as gentle.

TW for online grooming!!! I remember when I was around 10 or 11, I joined a Minecraft server that had a creative mode lobby. The chat was full of requests for people to join their "smexy truth or dare" parties. Being a curious preteen, I participated in one. Participants were dared to act out having "smex" on beds with other players or "dance" around on a pole. It was vanilla Minecraft, so there was only so much you act out, but what really strikes me looking back was how openly it was all done. Theres no way the server was ran by people my age, they were most likely older teens or young adults. Me and other players were obviously young, regardless of how nold we claimed we were. Despite that, the moderators and admins let it all happen, even adding features that went along with the practice, like in-game dating and marriage. Theres no way they didn't know what was happening and who it was happening to. It just makes me sick to think about now.

TW- the last portion of this video was so hard to watch, but I’m glad I did. Thank you for speaking up about your personal experiences, because myself and so many other women grew up thinking that online interactions like that were something to shrug off. I have never seen it better articulated than how you laid it all out. Online grooming experiences should NEVER be deemed as “eh, whatever. It happens” especially by said victims. The normalization of predators on MMO worlds is insane and needs to be talked about more.

The last part made me remember so much stuff, its trye that back in the day kids and adults had less shared spaces online (right cause now days we all use instagram and tiktok and its weird) but if i could talk to my future self or my past parents i would tell them to comunicate better. I remember the pivoting point in which i told my mom i had an online friend (a girl of my age, we actually trade messages sometimes now days) and my mom was like "no no no no, online people are bad" and basically i graspped that every single person i befriended online was going to be rejected by her. That was such a harmful message cause even if i listened to her you cant avoid people online so i would have lived with constant paranoia. When shit happened i was too afraid to tell her, cause I shouldn't have online friends in the first place. I remember my classmates were very open with their parents about their online friends and I always wandered why I couldn't tell my mom what was going on without her picking on the little things...

tw; mentions of those darker things li talked about in the last seg --- thank you so much for pointing out the gr00ming part in the end. i had internet access way too young. pair that with an already abusive and neglectful parent, and i really dont think i stood a chance. i was groomed for years, because i craved the validation i didnt get from my parent. when youre young, vulnerable, and lonely, all you want is to be cared about. we dont care where that "care" comes from. these experiences definitely changed my life for the worse. i have an unhealthy view on relationships, cant recognize abusive behavior from other people, etc. it genuinely scares me how many kids are growing up online simply because its easier for parents to hand them an ipad then spare their time, even though being a parent is a full time commitment.

oh my god I remember playing Switchin MMO as a kid and I always had to create a new account and struggled so hard to even grasp what was possible to do because I did not speak english, but I completely loved hopping on my shiny silver car and driving through the mountains and beaches, and then grabbing a horse on the ranch and clipping through the mountains to get to the highest point possible.

I was too scarred of the MMO tab to touch any of these lol. Granted, that was just much social anxiety as it was following the internet safety tips I had had drilled into my head, but either way it was probably for the best. Still really interesting to get a retroactive peek at what was behind the ~forbidden door~ from my childhood

Yes! I used to love the maid marian games, I have a lot of memories of failing to understand the basic gameplay of mid-evolution sherwood dungeon and asking random people if they wanted to game-marry me. And of course trying to jump to the earth in moonbase. It's always a delight to find someone else who knows of that site, it's like a secret between me and the other internet-scouring weirdos.

Thank you for talking about OurWorld! As someone who had an account and frequented every single virtual world that was popular from 2010 to 2014, OurWorld was definitely my favorite and no one ever speaks about it

New Li Speaks upload got me standing up and shouting “YEAAH!!” at work. Excellent topic fam cant wait to watch lol.

The art style of Woozworld kinda reminds me of the one used in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and other mobile games of that type. Edit to add that while I didn’t play any of the games talked about in depth, I did briefly play IMVU with one of my friends at the time. Thankfully I was more interested in looking all the cute pastel goth fashion than talking to strangers online.

Who needs creepypasta when you had girls go games

As sad as it, watch out for mods too! As a tween I had someone quite a bit older than me expose me to a lot of shit I should not have seen because they wanted me to know "what to watch out for". Ironically to this day I have not came upon stuff as bad as what I was "warned of". Remember kids, a trusted adult should be comfortable saying what theyre doing around other adults. Great video as always Li!

Just wanted to add my thoughts to your conclusion as someone active in my own community and who works in technology. You hit the nail on the head. The solutions that we have to the predator problem also would hurt many marginalized communities, and often severely. Its a real issue because a lot of the times the reforms being suggested to save the children aren't even designed help kids, not really, instead just acting as a back door to spy on activists. Its a tough spot we are in, and you are right in that even people in the field don't have much more clarity than you do about how to resolve the problem.

obsessed with your eye makeup this video 💕 the end definitely hit hard and knowing it’s way more common than talked about is upsetting but strangely comforting knowing that we didn’t go through that awful experience alone

Li, I'm so sorry that's happened to you. I was lucky to have nothing like that happen to me but it fills me with rage that these children have truly no safe space to turn to. Parents who claim to care, only care about control of their child, that just does more harm than good.

God, you're so right about the predators thing. I remember being approached by people who definitely wanted to flirt and cyber, and the only reason I avoided being victimized unlike many other unfortunate kids is because I was so romance/sex repulsed that I would back out of anything immediately if I got a hint of it and I ended up assuming that many random people who approached me for anything other than teaming up for games were up to no good. (It's lead me to almost always picking male avatars, even to this day, because in my Gaia days I always felt like I had more people trying to proposition me when I used a female avatar...) Which isn't fair, it shouldn't be on the children entirely to protect themselves from predators by having insight that many likely haven't developed yet, especially when many will do everything to appear trustworthy and friendly. I have no idea what kind of internet safety is being taught to kids these days but I came from the generation where the training was "everyone online is an evil predator who wants to get you so NEVER SHARE *ANY* INFORMATION!" so that might have had something to do with it, but I know many who disregarded that anyway. It's horrible you had to go through that kind of experience and I can only hope that you're healing from it.

Luckily, as a child who was not allowed an email address until middle school and never cared about talking with other "kids" online in games, i managed to avoid talking with any creepy adults in MMO chats (elsewhere? Not so lucky. But whatever). I didnt learn until later what kinds of people would frequent those chatrooms and helplessness is about all you can feel when you think about it. There is not good way to prevent it from happening and thus it is probably good that those spaces arent as common.

It’s 12:30 am and I’m crying on your behalf. I just want to give you a hug. I’m so sorry you were one of the many targets during that time.

I remember playing Dive In ! The Jeux2Filles version had somehow blocked the chat, so I would just swim around the map and send emojis to people sghdjfk. This being my only MMORPG experience was in part due to my mom forbidding me to play them after realising that there was adults on it.

very important message there at the end. thanks for talking about it. and dear parents or parents to be, TALK TO AND INFORM YOUR KIDS. if they are not too young to be victimized, it is quite dangerous to assume they are too young to know about it.

The message at the end was really, really good. I think the only thing that you glossed over is how normalized predators were/still are in these games by the userbase. Not necessarily because they can't do anything about it, but more so a lot of people who were victimized on these MMOs as kids go on to just brush it off because "oh it happened to me it's totally normal lol", "it's online", etc… or worse - they do it themselves. I myself was surrounded with people who treated it as a normal thing, and it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that what happened to me was a lot more harmful than I thought. It's a vicious cycle that we can only educate and re-educate on as time goes on to hopefully lessen the normalization of these things happening.

hearing you talk about the bad stuff that happens on these sites was really validating. if you were to do another segment, or even a whole video about it i'd love to see it. though if you didn't want to touch on that topic again, i completely understand.

I was an obsessive OurWorld player! Was hoping for a little deeper dive on that one but I respect your stance on not reviewing games you didn't play. LOVE the earrings!!!

I genuinely got so happy to see this uploaded

Li, you just unearthed a deep memory in me with this video. I was literally obsessed with the MMO games on GGG and have been trying to find these for AGES

Finally someone talks about Switching MMO! I lived there as a child. There's barely any info about it :( Loved the video btw! Very informative.

when i was a young teen i finally got my first phone and my parents would of course put some money in it so i could call people. these "people" were mostly just my parents themselves whenever i needed something so most of the credits were unused and yet still piled on each month so the number would stay up. so anyways i discovered i could use all of this money i wasn't using that just sat on my phone to buy premium currency on our world and finally become the fashionable edgy black+white+purple icon i truly wished to be. still miss playing it sometimes. i was always a shy kid so i barely actually interacted with people. i just wanted to look cool and play minigames. i think our world was my very first introduction to bejeweled. also really liked the dancing/rhythm minigame though i'm pretty sure those models were not really made for this level of animation. there were also in-game npcs who were the designers of some of the clothes shop and i remember taking one of them (edwin, the designer of the more "gothic" boutique who also funnily enough was in love with colette, the pink haired designer of the hypercute boutique) and just- writing him into completely unrelated fanfic as the older brother of my main character.

OurWorld mention!!!! OurWorld was my LIFE as a teen! I would log in everyday and honestly, if you didn't hang out in the 'popular' areas people were so cool. The only real problem was the constant whispers from people asking you for gifts. Most would be respectful when you said no but some would get so aggressive. Once had to kick a girl out of my own condo cause a friend of mine invited her in and she would not stop asking me for gifts and resorted to insulting and harassing me for saying no (not really sure why she thought that would work?). But I have more positive memories than negative! Like hanging out with my friends at the coffee shop, trying to sync our dance moves or throwing a shrinking potion at some guy that kept threatening to beat people up lol.

OH MY GOD IT'S PET PARTY. you helped me find that one game on that site that i've never been able to rediscover after years of it being a vague memory. i was this light blue dog(?) with white wing eyebrow-looking things and big gray anime eyes, and i got married to another player. we'd also write notes (think there was a whiteboard you could scribble on via mouse, and a more structured text-based messages) for the other to find when we logged in and visited our house - i remember that since my character was named skylar and i told my "wife" i was male, she got confused since she had an irl female friend named skylar. not sure why i remember that so well

Oh man I played the shit out of sherwood dungeon as a kid. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing, but I liked it. If you want a more thorough dive into it, Josh Strife Hayes made a video about it a small while ago. Also, the ending segment hit home. Although I won't go into any detail, having unsupervised Internet access on these kinda sites and games as a kid was not a good time.

I straight-up thought Switchin MMO was a fever dream at this point!!! I was looking everywhere for it recently

Oh my god the earrings!!!

omg i dont even want to know how much time i actually spent playing Kitchen Queens (i was playing on GGO well into my teens, those damn daily quizzes had me hooked!!)

My gosh you covered literally every single MMO I grew up playing on GGG 😭😭 I tried explaining Switchin and Club Marian to people and they thought I had just made it up

been thinking about Switch In and Club Marian for weeks but couldn’t remember what either were called. thank you so much for covering these!!!

I played TONS of Audition. Started very shortly after it opened because I was able to use my actual first name, no letters numbers or weird spelling, for my character. Screen with 6 directions isnt really familiar to me, but the screen where you were just boppin around, you have to press space bar (I think) to "enter" the combination before the next "beat" of the song. That's represented by the bar with the pulsing blue/white. Eventually you're entering like 10-12 keys or something and trying to time the red dot with the white center. based on how accuately you timed it, you were given a rating of "okay, good, great, perfect" or something similar. Apologies if I sound womansplain-y, Audition is a core memory of mine and I'm excited my knowledge is relevant. A feature I remember strongly was being able to "date" another player. In order to do so, I believe you needed to be playing the 2v2v2 mode, and be 3 teams of 1 guy 1 girl (heteronormativity booo). If both of you completed the sequence of keys AND "entered" in sync with the beat, you'd earn a heart which I think was displayed next to the current level indicator above the arrows. You needed to earn at least 5 in a song to be given the option of requesting your partner to become your "boyfriend/girlfriend". I remember when I earned like 17 with some guy much higher level than me, was very disappointed we didn't official "date", I'd clearly proven myself capable. There's a sketch book of mine somewhere where I drew a sketch for a "button presser", a gizmo that would have physically pressed the keys for me, and had a sensor on the screen to detect which keys to press and the rhythm. Good times.

Even though Pet Party was such a blip in my childhood, it still stands out to me. I remember one day I found out that if I turned off my computer and turned it back on, I could watch a bunch of those "once every so often" ads to get money. I'd do that over and over again so I could get some cash. But it's not like I actually did much with it though. I wish I could actually use my brain when Pet Party was around. I remember being really frustrated with the game because I wasn't really sure how to actually progress. Now that I'm older I want my redemption.

thank you for the shout-out to the flashpoint archive!! i was just recently trying to figure out a way to play the games on maid marian and couldn't figure it out myself.

YESS A NEW VIDEO LI THANK YOU FOR THIS BLESSING!!! 💗💗

At first I thought I wouldn't relate but OMG CLUB MARION. I never knew that it wasn't just a dream SWITCHIN AND DIVEIN. I remember those and specifically how liminal DiveIn was!

Man, lots of nostalgia seeing Pet Party. I started playing it after Pet Society closed, and I thought it was only a Facebook game (I played Facebook games using my family members' accounts when they allowed me), never knew it was on GirlsGoGames despite playing on there too! Then again, like many people, I never checked the MMO tab because I wasn't interested. (TW here for talks of grooming and the Internet being unsafe) Also your last section hit me pretty hard. Unfortunately, I think a combo of everyone being pushed to use tech all the time + parents not understanding how tech works beyond a basic grasp + the outside world often being a hellscape for many kids across the world, leads to the situations you described at the end of your video. That's what certainly happened to me- my mom NEVER understood anything beyond any Apple product, so when I got a Windows computer, she basically told me "figure it out yourself," and left me at the mercy of the Internet to basically be a test guiena pig for her. I saw a lot of inappropriate and gross stuff on my time on here, which has likely worsened my already bad anxiety disorders I've had since birth, along with mom getting mad at me for finding such things at a young age. Unfortunately, like you said, there is no good solution beyond parents and kids being educated properly on how to use the Internet and the dangers in it (and just safety from predators in general,) but that's nearly impossible to do as well because a lot of people take offense to being taught anything nowadays, and would likely shout at schools and whoever else tries to teach their kid anything to keep them safe. It's a nightmare, and despite my love for the Internet and the good friends I've made here, I will admit it. The Internet, even in this age, is still a dangerous wild west. It has changed, but it has kept some of its old dangers while adding new ones (like intense and invasive advertising.) I hope one day we figure this all out so everyone, adult and kid, can be safe and enjoy the internet. Maybe not a utopia, but I always hope for a better world, both online and offline.

I have just unlocked a memory just now. Thank you for making this video! I haven’t thought about the these MMOs for AGES

I listen to your videos while sleeping so thank you for this!