Growing up, I was an angel of a child. (I still am). I never misbehaved, because I was a tiny adult right from the start. I’m an only child and had no reason to act out. Not that I was spoiled, trust me, but it just never made sense for me to do anything more wild than read my books and watch “General Hospital” with my mom.
My dad has always worked with computers, in some regard, my entire life. This meant that I was surrounded by technology from an early age. I had both email and AIM a few years before most of my classmates, and felt very grown-up about it.
It wasn’t hard for me, for whatever reason, to fall in love with all things tech. The skills I needed to browse the web weren’t hard to pick up, and IM’ing with friends and family felt like such a fun hobby.
Beginning to chat online that young is definitely why I’d prefer to text you rather than call you today. It became second nature very quickly to talk to people without having to deal with them.
This is not a horror story of running into online predators on shady chat rooms. This is, instead, a story of finding friendship in an unlikely place.
One of the biggest lies we tell on the Internet today rhymes with “firms and bervices.” Ain’t nobody reading those before agreeing to them. And back then, when we were in elementary and middle school, the biggest lies we told were “oh, I’m totally 13-years-old” or “I definitely got my parents’ permission to be on here.”
We were not and we did not, yet we blazed a trail onto the World Wide Web regardless. We were fearless and adorably reckless. We had thrown what little caution we were afforded in this world to the wind.
The Internet was where I found some of my closest friends.
More specifically, I found them on the Neopets chat boards. Excuse me, the “Neoboards.”
There was a bunch of us who liked to hang out on the exclusive (because it was “invisible” to regular, non-cool users who didn’t know how to unlock access to it) Jellyworld Neoboards, and we were all totally besties. We chatted every day and knew a good amount of details about each others’ personal lives. It was all through a filter of good-natured fun.
This Neoboard was basically open for any kind of discussion, as long as it followed the Neopets rules. You could collect really cool avatars and customize your font/signature. Hopefully, if you were new, the main group would accept you as one of their own quickly; it was always easy to tell if someone was trying too hard or just wasn’t ~getting~ how things worked around those parts. Kids will automatically create a hierarchy.
Of course, there was a power couple who were the most popular people of the joint. Think of them as the two Regina Georges of the Jellyworld boards. Shawn and Anna. The rest of the group followed their saga closely because, apparently, they knew each other in real life and were also totally engaged; they were a few years older than us, which only elevated their cool levels. Years later, I found out that both of them were totally made up characters played by two bored girls with too much time on their hands.
However, not everyone on those boards was made up. In fact, I still talk frequently with at least three of the people I met on there, because we all became Facebook friends as soon as we became of age. We had, over the course of our stint playing on the animated playground of Neopets, grown to genuinely care about each other. We were a little online family.
The thing is, you can’t talk about your online friends with just anybody. Chat rooms were seen as vile dens of sin that were terrifying places for children to discover. And even though our world was totally different and very innocent, it was still somewhat shameful to discuss it IRL.
Would you tell your parents about the strangers you were talking to online? What if conversation came up during lunch at school one day, and it reminded you of something your pal on the boards mentioned the other day?
It was like leading a double life, like keeping a dirty secret all to yourself. You’d try not to slip up and spill the beans. No one wanted to out themselves as one of those online weirdos. Eventually, it became easier. You could maybe say “a friend who goes to another school,” but at some point people might wonder how many friends and schools you could have connections with. It was easier to avoid the whole thing by clamming up.
To me though, it never felt like it should be something to hide. Our friendship was real to us, even if it was through a computer screen. It should be celebrated that we had found people who related to us on some level, but I completely understand the dangers of letting children run loose on the Internet. However, we had it under control. By turning our chatboard into a sort of personal space, it became a kids’ clubhouse with an understood order to it. It wasn’t some lawless beast; it was sanctuary from our everyday lives. Chatting with people online was a harmless joy to us.
These days, it’s hella normal to chat online all the time. In fact, it’s probably weirder to chat with them and more acceptable to just date them. With all these apps and sites at our fingertips, it’s a wonder we ever speak words out loud anymore.
Maybe that’s because we were all raised by the blue, glowing light of our screens since we were wee babes. Just me? Okay.
