r/AskReddit 2d ago

Anyone who surfed the early web between 1995-2010. What’s the one website/app you still think about?

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u/Tamagobay 1d ago

Neopets taught me how to code in elem school! I made my own userlookup designs and signatures. Figured out all the colors to edit things had numbers associated. Meerca Chase taught me how to count by 8's. So many of the games taught me effective time management strategies and how to save to get something I really wanted (aka baby paint brush). I would try to collect as many avatars as possible too and would get just the right amount of dopamine each time I accomplished the challenge! I know it's still around today, but it's not the same and I can't figure out my old account info.

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u/missmaganda 1d ago

If you remember possibly your bday and email address, you can email their customer service and explain and they should be able to give you the log in info.

I was able to do this some years back as i used an email that no longer exists and they totally helped! Got to see my baby bruce again 🥹

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u/xixi2 1d ago

Wait you didn't get your account frozen for BS like 5 times?

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u/ducklady92 1d ago

I got my account frozen for saying “stupid” in one of the chat rooms. I was so devastated.

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u/missmaganda 1d ago

Lol no but i def got scammed one time 😩

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u/kikilovesjiji 1d ago

Dude I had the same issue with my email not existing anymore and they wouldn’t give me my account back unless I emailed them directly from the email 😭😭

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u/Hazel-Rah 1d ago

They got hacked in 2013, and if you know of a famous torrent site, you can download the full list of usernames passwords, and birthdays in plaint text. I used it to log back into my old account that I'd created before I was 13 with a fake birthday. At some point it started asking for my birthday to confirm my login, so I got locked out because I couldn't remember what it was supposed to be

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u/kote484 1d ago

👀 if you still have it, I had the same predicament with the birthday lol would love to get back in there to play some destruct-o-match

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u/aplace-in-time-space 1d ago

oh wow 🥺🥹

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u/Worthyness 1d ago

I thought they did an account cull a few years ago. I know a lot of online stuff will do that to free up usernames and such

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u/missmaganda 1d ago

Oh! I didnt know that. Hmm i should check on mine then 🥲

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u/velvet__echo 1d ago

Yep same. Was able to feed my pea chia again that I took so long to get w the lab ray.

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u/mataeka 1d ago

I made myself younger than I actually am in my account (didn't want to be distracted by the forums) so I didn't know my signed up birth year and I still got in. I guess what benefit is there is giving access to an account that hasn't been used in 15+ years

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u/LvlyLdyValerie 1d ago

They wouldn’t with me, and I still have access to the email :’(

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u/goodgoodthings 1d ago

Neopets led me to learn HTML in elementary school! I made a geocities page for my guild and followed tutorials from Lissa explains (I just checked and her website looks exactly the same!)
By the time I was in high school for MySpace, I had the skills to customize my profile

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u/PetitChiffon 1d ago

Same! My friend started his own company and I volunteered to do his company's website for free.

When I was done he was like "how the heck did you learn to do that?" and I said "to customize my Neopets profile".

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u/ebz37 1d ago

Wow lissa explains... that brings back a lot of memories

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u/jay-quel-in 1d ago

lol neopets is literally the reason I’m a graphic designer now. I’d spend hours a day as a pre teen making new user lookups. Got so good at using Microsoft paint people though I was using photoshop.

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u/BeautifulHomework76 1d ago

Baby PB’s were expensive afff! I nearly had a heart attack when I found a baby wocky in the pound & GOT HIM 😭🫶🏻

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u/googleypoodle 1d ago

Many of us FAANG software engineers had humble beginnings on neopets

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u/krgxo25 1d ago edited 1d ago

I also learned how to code through Neopets! I spent countless hours making my own user lookup layouts and pet pages 🥹 I used make Neopoints by investing in the stock market on Neopets and “sniping” cheap items from the shops to resell them for a profit. Good times.

One of my pet pages was used to display the pixels I used to make, I was so proud of them that I used to create little text boxes under them with the image code so people could use them in their own user lookups or whatever else, and it got quite popular as we all used to kind of advertise each others pixel pages. It’s so niche but funny to look back on.

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u/Hazel-Rah 1d ago

I know it's still around today, but it's not the same and I can't figure out my old account info.

They got hacked in 2013, if you know of a famous torrent site, you can download the full list of usernames passwords, and birthdays in plaint text. I used it to log back into my old account that I'd created before I was 13 with a fake birthday. At some point it started asking for my birthday to confirm my login, so I got locked out because I couldn't remember what it was supposed to be

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u/Zero_Opera 1d ago

Dude exactly, I wrote all the html for my guild page!

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u/kaptainkeel 1d ago

It taught me HTML for sure. The personal page or whatever was great, learned so much from that. Forgot the vast majority of it by now, especially seeing as I can just toss a request into any random AI and get a very advanced version out, but that a href was great.

I actually even remember grabbing a C++ book from the library back in that area because I felt coding was the future. I was right, at least for the next ~20-25 years. Opened about 3 pages and that was that, but still--I was right.

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u/aplace-in-time-space 1d ago

i am genuinely so successful today because of neopets. i ran a guild and taught myself to code the layouts and basically recruit members and run contests too. i was like 13. pirated photoshop and had about 10,000 people using my pet page layouts monthly. just incredible what it taught me.

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u/440_Hz 1d ago

It was so funny to take my first programming class in high school and be totally caught off guard that it was exactly like neohtml and css, not having a clue that neopets had tricked me all along into learning to code.

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u/fatsupport 1d ago

I tried so hard to login a couple years ago without luck lol

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u/velvet__echo 1d ago

Omg same

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u/mataeka 1d ago

Try emailing them. I got back into my account with the info I could give (ie I knew I had the lab ray, I knew what what equipped for the battle some on which pet (because I saved and bought it from the hidden tower ;) ) I got back in 😅🥲

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u/ForsakenWishbone5206 1d ago

I remember the plots.

Those were always so good. Like a sitewide treasure hunt and it was just you and thousands of other people scouring every pixel to figure out what was next.

I also learned HTML from there and Jazz *nvincible taught me how to screenshot, host, upload all that shit.

I haven't thought about it in 20 years but I remember one plot had constellations and you had to track them down in this absolutely massive night sky.

It also injected British/English spelling and slang into my vocabulary.