This is likely to be of interest mainly to people of a certain generation (that is, late Millennials/early Gen Z) but among Neopets’ small remaining playerbase there’s serious anger at the moment over the decision (apparently undertaken by Neopets’ parent holding company) to partner with cryptobros and start this new Neopets NFT project. Leading fansite Jellyneo explains what’s going on, and why people are so pissed off, well.

Overall, people are suspicious that this is something of a last-ditch moneygrab before the parent company shuts down the long-neglected and currently half-broken Neopets website for good. Personally, to indulge the nostalgia I have for Neopets in the Good Old Days (that’s circa 2005) I made a user account on Neopets Classic , which is an ongoing fan project to re­cre­ate the site with the vibe it had at that time (except without ads, and swearing is allowed, lmao – I laughed so hard when literally the first secret avatar I unlocked read “I NEVER FUCKING LEARNED HOW TO READ.”). Copyright is a bitch but honestly, I think it’s fan projects like this one which have the potential to be satisfying in a way that the “real” website is unlikely to ever be again.

Note also: an effort to archive as much fanwork as possible  from the almost 1,000 editions of the Neopian Times.

Interesting (if a bit pretentious) piece on the hollowness of the “recognition” you can get from strangers on the internet. And also our loss of privacy.

I found this all an interesting discussion! I’ve certainly enjoyed having my own site again and tinkering to add various IndieWeb features, but it’s not something I’d realistically expect the average person to do. That said, I also agree that the fundamentals of the IndieWeb are really just having your own site – everything else like post types, webmentions, etc. seem mainly there to mimic social media, which I think is an awesome extra, but isn’t necessary just to have your own, “independent” site. The latter is much easier of course (although still not something everyone will want to do).

Another thing I will say I’ve noticed is that most of the people who’ve implemented IndieWeb principles to any degree on their site also have Micro.blog accounts… making it much easier in most cases to comment on Micro.blog than by actually making a reply post on my own site. I guess there’s nothing really wrong with that, but it just seems funny given the “IndieWeb” ethos. I can make the effort to do otherwise (like I’m doing for this, now) but most of the time I wonder what’d be the point, and take the path of least resistance.

😂 Tragically accurate… a little too accurate, perhaps, because I had to disable my ad blocker for this site in order to see all the details I could tell from the source code that they’d put in. (via @mandaris  on Micro.blog)