After the initial NFT launch, I was tasked with cleaning it up and putting it back onto the right track. I’m sure you probably read about the backlash and all the hiccups that we went through. When we decided to launch the NFT collection, I was not yet involved with the IP-it was a third-party solution provider that pitched us. Why do you think the NFTs didn’t work out? You were the chief metaverse officer around that era, right?

Then there was the ill-fated 2021 attempt to sell NFTs via the Neopets Metaverse, which drew ire from the remaining die-hards and nostalgic millennials alike. The death knell seemed all but guaranteed once Adobe Flash Player discontinued in 2020, which rendered much of the Neopets site unusable. Up until this summer, Neopets was under the ownership of the Chinese company NetDragon Websoft, where it languished while roughly 100,000 daily active users remained over recent years. Then its user base aged up and moved on, and the enterprise switched hands a few times. In 2005, after Viacom bought Neopets for $160 million, Wired reported that the site was the second-stickiest on the internet, “ahead of Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and eBay.” You might argue that Neopets’ greatest legacy was helping to train young minds-and the next generation of online platforms-the addictive necessity of logging on in order to tend to relationships both real and otherwise. The site wasn’t without controversy: Parents fretted over the use of “ immersive advertising,” and at one point, the site’s business practices were linked directly to Scientology, according to The Outline. After launching in 1999 by a pair of British developers and cultivating an audience of 25 million active users at its peak in the mid-2000s, Neopets became a cultural touchstone amongst kids growing up on Web 1.0 for its wholesome, elaborate universe (and the sophisticated economies that developed within and around the site). The news was niche, but carried untold emotional import: Neopets-the virtual pet browser game and touchstone of the 2000s internet-was back. In July, a tiny ripple reverberated through the web, barely perceptible except to the type of extremely online millennial who can still hear a faint dial-up tone ringing through their formative memories.

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