bless thy neopet

I do not actually know how I ended up on this site, but bless your lord that I did. Hours of boredom at work are to be relieved through his mysterious workings. Oh, that’s right, I was searching for my previous blog entry “the devil in yu(kio)”. After all one has to make sure that the plumbing of blogging works. Because I innocuously searched for “the devil in yu(kio)” I ended up on this christian forum. Imagine my surprise at stumbling on this mezzaninious subculture. Readers, there is a reason why none of my stumbling leads to christianity – it drives me bonkers – thought I should clear this up first. So if you are faint of heart, easy prey for satanism or plain just love your lord blindly you might want to avert your faithful eyes. On the other hand if this is your mysterious route to him, be my guest as well. Do keep in mind that the only reason why I ended up on this site is that some christian can not spell “you”.

This is were I found myself when I clicked on a random link. I saw it and I couldn’t help myself, needed to find out what happens when a good christian asks “Have yu ever questioned if there is a God?"

Since I questioned this many times my interest was slightly aroused, raising its head, so to speak. There are of course all the banal answers: Being saved from being hung by noose from window by classmates (the lord likes to disguise himself, although I think of it as bad timing); accusing satan of the little darts that make our day yukky (lordy, lordy are you fucking kidding me?); being confronted with god-less entellectualism all our lives (not my spelling).

My, my this is so much fun, I wish I could go on, but I have to leave this satisfaction of my own sense of rational superiority behind and instead concentrate on my real topic. Also my aroused interest was passing out like a dude after a fraternity drink fest.

Please have a look at this screenshot:As you can see this is the profile of a christian user. I left out his mug, even though it would have provided additional laughs. This christian has 13.496 blessings. You correctly ask, just like I did, what the hell (today no pun goes unintended) these blessings are. Did we finally find a direct fiber optics line to the overlord and all these good souls have his IP while my sinfully aroused but not interested behind does not? Is the pope bestowing these blessings upon his much loved slightly sect-arian USA parishioners? Do you become a saint if you have one trillion blessings? I am sorry but if you thought that any of the options above are correct I must disappoint.

Some of you will know that I used to work at neopets and although it seems neoages (yes, we all talked like that all the time) ago, I still remember how to get neopoints and what to do with them. Neopets is a social website for children. Kids play games, partake in art contests, bid and sell at auctions, refer other users and earn interest on their neopoints at the neobank. Here is a link to the faq at neopets regarding their neopoints. The best chance of getting a lot of neopoints was by doing things that would promote the site or show that you spent a lot of time on the site so that the site owners could sell it to he highest bidder (more eyeballs means more users, means more cold hard cash). Neopoints was the currency of the site with which you could buy yourself weapons, flowers and magic spells.

What does this have to do with the christian forum? To explain the link between the two sites here is their faq in regards to blessings. Please read it all, you might miss a blessedly good laugh. Examine what you can buy on this site with their blessed currency, and how one best earns it. Yup, you can play little flash games, bid and sell at auctions, refer other users and deposit your blessings into a bank to earn one blessed percent blessings interest. If you compound that, by the end of your life you might have a gazillion blessings and the only question remaining is whether heaven accepts that particular currency as readily as the tithe you paid your sins off with in your RL church. If this christian forum was not conceptualized with neochristians in mind my name is not Guardian of the Pearly Gates.

Apart from the hilarity ensuing from a bunch of originally, sinfully stupid people (I am sorry, God did not forget to put extra sugar in your Latte, even though your morning is yukky now) playing an online game with prizes that 12 year olds become tired of fairly quickly, it strikes me as completely against all church dogma that people can buy, sell, earn via auction or postings blessings that then accumulate in a bank account to grow further interest on your investment. Didn’t they all hate the Jews a few years ago because they were the only ones allowed to earn interest off money lending? And now we can earn interest on blessings?

However that may be, one of the central issues for social websites is how to monetize the site. How to make money of the users who traffic it. Often that happens in the form of merchandise or cross pollination where a user can purchase RL items with the site currency or vice versa. You see where I am going with this, right? While users at neopets purchased merchandise or just plainly cool gaming items what will users from the christian forum be able to buy? Shorter time in hell? forgiveness for your padre? nicer wings? better view from your cloud? Not that I am such an expert on these matter, but I really believed that these faith-things would be off-limits to the general hustle and bustle of internet commerce and social website engineering. But lo and behold you should see the avatars, holy armor and unsoiled virgins you can buy with your blessings. If you want to impress one of those poor creatures, lost out there in the empty vastness of the net, nothing says “I believe” like a Million Blessings Avatar. She will swoon over your righteous, rising ardor established by blessings, posts and referrals and you can take her in/to your lair of laughter to violate her at least twice until the time death do you part.