Neopets "comebacks"

[Winona]

I think that the friend thing hits the hardest for me. It's one of my best memories of Neopets. Other than Clraik, I haven't really had a friend or friend group to play Neopets with since I was maybe 14. I remember me and my friends had a huge friend group and people were constantly being added. We were from all over the world but would meet up in an AIM chat any time we were online and even though none of us ever met, we were very close because of Neopets (we even used to all have each others phone #s too and this was back before cellphones and discord and such so you were giving your parents/grandparents house phone # lol)

I think besides the site generally being a mess, not having any true Neopets related friendships in years and years is another reason it's easy for me to just go on hiatus whenever I feel bored with it.

Honestly, I feel this a lot. I think the time (at least in adulthood) when I stayed on Neo the longest was when I had actual friends who played it too! I met two other players on the boards who were really fun and it totally clicked between us, and we did the sneaky add each other on Facebook through a petpage image thing. We stayed close for ages, and then one girl eventually dropped off as her life got busy. The other friendship stayed strong though, and we were close for years and years! I even got to drive down to her uni and meet her IRL, which was absolutely wild. Unfortunately some really rough stuff happened to her and the friendship just didn't last through it. I miss the good times we used to have, and Neopets is definitely not the same without that friendship element. Makes it really easy to drop off.

I also feel bad saying this, but I've never really been able to connect properly with the cK community? It feels like there are a lot of unspoken social rules that I could never quite pick up on, and I just ended up as a lurker in the end after a bunch of people I was friendly with ended up banned or left/went on hiatus after a bunch of drama several years back. It was definitely easier that way. (Also I'm almost certain I got kicked from the Discord for being annoying and asking too many questions lmao, I was pretty upset at the time but now it's just hilarious)