Thread by @angelysalt, people are interested and i love nothing more than internet nostalgia, so [...]

people are interested and i love nothing more than internet nostalgia, so here's that thread on some specific bits early 2000s neopets drama. you're welcome

be aware: i did not want to write this whole story into tweets, so you're gonna looking at a lot of old screenshots. i've linked the original sources, however twitter's character limit for alt text made it near impossible. apologies

essentially, this deep dive started because i remembered, suddenly, a neopets hate site i'd found as a 9-10 year old tender and impressionable neopets liker in the ye old 00s. it detailed the SECRET story of a badass neohacker who TNT didn't want you to know about

i, of course, knew this was FORBIDDEN knowledge that THE MAN didn't want me to know, so i saved it to a text file somewhere.

that text file is lost. BUT, the wayback machine has the site! and it is *exactly* as bonkers as you might expect
https://web.archive.org/web/20120520225627/http://neoland.ninomiya.org/screwyouneo.html

this is the specific article i remembered, the story of ad0. supposedly THE hacker of neopets, responsible for unspeakable neocarnage (first archived in 2004)
https://web.archive.org/web/20040518045119/http://neoland.ninomiya.org/ad0.html

here is the linked news page, which definitely seriously blames the lab ray and contains no sarcasm what-so-ever
http://www.neopets.com/nf.phtml?nf_date=2003-03-24

so you're probably thinking "screwyouneo" (he goes by dave!) is not the most reliable unbiased source for neopets news, and i don't blame you! but there are other sources, including this article about "the dark side of neopets" by a user named chromefox
https://web.archive.org/web/20060117073524/http://www.pinkpt.com/scammed_thedarker.htm

this implies ad0 left neo in 2002, which contradicts the other article. that said, i can't tell how old this page is - the first archive was in 2006, but early net archives can be spotty. i do however believe it was posted later than 2003, for reasons i will explain later.

someone calling themselves ad0 was apparently involved in a separate "hack" in 2005. i've seen claims in forums that he was active up into 2007. various people claim to have known him, or reference hacks he was involved in. these could be bullshit.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080408125508/http://www.pinkpt.com/scammed_the-javascript-hackings.htm

please append that mentally to everything you see here, by the way. any and all of this could be bullshit. i am digging through all of this because i am deranged. that established, let's continue

thing is, this all doesn't actually start or end with ad0. that article also includes the story of Mari_Jhane, a popular user who apparently got away with scamming because they were friends with staff. its particularly spicy

certain parts of this story can be confirmed via archives of puppetz website, which does indeed credit Mari_Jhane for a list of AIM usernames and some supposed leaked photos of staff which are, thankfully, not archived.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010207201955/http://www.puppetz.net/neopets.html

there's also an "interview" with MistressFaerie, in which she does mention threatening to sue in relation to her firing. i doubt this, or any of the other supposed legal threats mentioned throughout this story, from either side, actually went anywhere.

however. there's no real other evidence or even mention elsewhere that i've found that Mari_Jhane was actually a scammer. in fact, it's hard to find information on Mari_Jhane at all, except... you remember this line?

yeah, that "article on a popular site" was also written by chromefox. and it is 100% personal drama btwn the author & Mari_Jhane, involving a "Loser List" and dedicated hate pages. it is one of the most perfect encapsulations of forum drama ive ever seen.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051110133616/http://www.pinkpt.com/index.php?page=scammed_ontrial

you know when i said this could all be bullshit? there is really no way to dig up the truth of all this. not just because it's almost two decades old. it's because it's all built on things like this.

i used to be an early aughts forum user myself, so i can tell you straight: there is NOTHING anyone loved more than lying and creating elaborate drama for clout in tiny subculture communities. NOTHING

"there is probably a huge mix here of the truth, innocent misconception, lies, and personal bias. what bit is what, i have no idea. i doubt anyone does! that's the beauty of it!" i say, like a totally normal person who has spent their evening researching drama from 2003

however, to tie some loose knots, there is at least one reference to some of this from the most reliable source we're going to get from this - adam and donna themselves, in their 2014 reddit AMA.
https://www.jellyneo.net/?go=adam_donna_ama

(they mention a different user wrt staff favoritism, but this thread is long enough as it is. you'll have to go on your OWN waybackmachine deep dive for that)

in terms of other "recent" updates, though less reputable, on a more recent archive of the PPT "Darkside of Neopets" post, there are supposed comments from certain people involved. these could, again, be bullshit.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160801061421/http://pinkpt.com/neopets-editorials/the-darker-side-of-neopia-by-chromefox/

however, certain things in it do seem reasonable to me. the clarification puppetz was not "sued" but sent a C&D, for example, or that all of these people would *absolutely* egosearch themselves years later to comment on an article that was almost a decade old even then.

there's a lot more i could dig into here! like, for example, the world of neopets hate sites is wild on its own.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090829011009/http://geocities.com/neopets_mae_noelle/Index2.html

but. ultimately. just my opinion, but: there is nothing funnier than 2000s net drama. i know there's a fight on twitter every day, but does any of it live up to shit like this? in my opinion, no. never.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120528125203/http://neoland.ninomiya.org/mcdonalds.html

the end :)
https://web.archive.org/web/20130427025237/http://neoland.ninomiya.org/fuckneofascism.html

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