I first discovered Neopets in early 2003, after finding a stuffed blue Aisha at Target. I was just excited about the weird cat and had no idea what Neopets was until I looked it up when I got home. My parents had just recently bought our first computer, and I pretty much just used the internet to look up pictures of unicorns and listen to Mozart midis, so Neopets was completely unlike anything I had ever seen. I quickly became obsessed and got my parents and friends to make accounts too. I was homeschooled, so Neopets was the first place where I could be surrounded by kids my own age and act dumb. I remember constantly staying up all night chatting with people and doing terrible, cringey Warrior cats roleplay. Neopets was also where I learned HTML for the first time; I was very proud of my Neverwinter Nights themed userlookup.

My first account was sadly frozen in 2008, when I was 13. The night Obama won the US election, I made a post on the Neoboards congratulating him and got into an argument with some people about politics. At this point I had already received several warnings from Neopets about discussing religion and politics, so I guess this was the final straw. You may be wondering why a child was arguing about these topics on Neopets.com. I have no idea. Hopefully Obama saw my post before it was removed and appreciates what I sacrificed for him. I moved to a side account but started to lose interest in the site. However, I still visited at least once or twice a year for several years until I finally lost the password to my account.

In 2020 I was reminded of Neopets and decided to see what it was like so many years after I had stopped playing. I managed to guess the password and fake birthday I used on an old account (I was over 13 when I made this account, so I have no idea why I used a fake birthday) and started playing again. The site was basically the same as when I had left it, but I found myself playing quite differently than I had when I was a kid. Pet customisation was something I hated when it was introduced; I thought it made the pets ugly, but now it's my favourite part of the site. Now that I'm older, I'm also much better at making and saving neopoints, so I've managed to complete a lot of my childhood goals. I'm not a super consistent player; I have months where I play every day and months where I don't play at all, but I always come back. It's amazing that this site has lasted over 25 years now; so many other websites from my childhood are long gone. I really hope it gets another 25!