Webkinz

While watching Second Skin and then reading Karolina’s post on Club Penguin, I was reminded of another website that was popular for kids named Webkinz.  On this website, one could navigate the virtual world as an animal, communicate with other children, and play games against them as well.  Webkinz required one to purchase an actual plush Webkinz animal from select toy stores in order to access the game online for a full year (a “Lil’ Kinz” would usually be priced at $13.00). As a camp counselor in 10^th grade, I noticed that many of my campers were obsessed with this online community. However, little did they know that two years earlier I almost had been sucked into this same virtual world.

In 8^th grade, my best friend Kaitlyn was obsessed with Webkinz. I don't really know how she even found out about it because I am pretty sure she was past the age range that Webkinz targeted.  However, she would not stop raving about it and forced me to buy my own Webkinz. I remember selecting the mini unicorn, because, well… who wouldn’t want to be a unicorn?  After playing most of the games and participating in many of the activities such as gem mining, I realized that Webkinz was actually incredibly fun. Who cares if the game was not targeted towards me; I was hooked.  Even my older sister, who was 20 at the time, would come home from college and be like “Let me do your gem mining for the day!” I could not believe that my “cool” older sister would want to play these games; I would laugh thinking about the way in which her sorority sisters would react if they ever found out that she was obsessed with playing these “babyish” games.    

 Meanwhile, I wondered how Kaitlyn was faring since we would not talk about Webkinz at school (We didn’t want the popular kids to hear about this and make fun of us even more).  One day, I went over to her house, and I saw that a couple of new Webkinz were sitting on her dresser.  I thought that was a bit weird since I believed that owning one Webkinz was enough. However, when I opened her closet to find a Wii game to play, a bunch of Webkinz fell out from behind a clothing rack.  I confronted her, and she got a bit defensive. I guess at that moment I realized she was becoming obsessed with Webkinz; I figured that when she made up excuses about being too busy to hang out, she was probably just in her room playing on Webkinz. I told her that we were going to be in high school next year and if anyone found out about her obsession, our lives would be a living hell.  

Of course, my best friend did not talk to me for a while.  After my one-year membership expired, I never went back onto Webkinz.  Recently, when I was cleaning out my closet to move to another city, I found my old unicorn which reminded me of the weird year that was 8^th grade.  The experience reminded me of how in Second Skin , the players seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with their favorite MMORPGs.  I do not believe there is anything wrong with playing games; however, when one becomes obsessed with these games, such as my best friend or these players, I think someone needs to be there to help bring them back down to earth.