Webkins death rumors

Webkins was a kids game I played. I had animals which I could feed and take to the doctor and house and play with. I remember a lot of rumors about it though. The rumors about the doctor going crazy and killing your pet, the rumors about the duck lady who confirms your pet’s ID number and lets you name them and bring them into the game giving you a black (or sometimes brown) letter, after opening would kill your pet. Why? Why did this game inspire so much fear, so many rumors about death, and killing? Webkins was a game about maintainance. You maintained a house with rooms for your pets, you maintainted their food, you maintained their water, their health. But maintaintence implies potiential ruin. The fact you had to feed your webkins forced you to remember they could starve, the fact you had to take your webkins to the vet reminded you that they could get sick (and if you don’t fix that sickness, worse could happen).

The beginning of webkins is about acceptance. You must have a verified pet which you bought in real life to add your new digital pet. This verification is framed in a cute way with the cute duck woman who asks you your code nicely and tells you to take care of your new pet, but containted in this nice and cute verification system is the potiential for rejection. In that nice look the duck gives you when your pet is confirmed is the opposite look she could give you when they aren’t confirmed. Of course, as a kid I typed in the code wrong a couple times, and she didn’t give me a bad look or anything, she didn’t send me a brown letter which killed any of my pets, but that wasn’t important. What was important in her nice look upon confirmation wasn’t that the opposite would necesarilly happen, but that it could happen.

Most importantly, webkins was a game about responsibility, and responsibility implies potiential failure. It implies the possibility of letting someone down. The webkins death rumors most often circulated around the two duck characters, because they were the characters which were to hold you accountable. When you brought a new webkins into existence it was the lady duck who made sure you didn’t lie, when you were trying to keep your existing webkins well fed and cared for, it was the doctor who reminded you to take care of them. These figures were never mean, they were never harsh, they never hurt the players feelings, but they didn’t have to. Within their positivity was contained their potential negativity. Within their niceness was contained the potential for hate. Within their encouragement was contained the potiential for harsh scolding.

Webkins tried to cover up the truly terrifying position of these characters, but no amount of cuteness, encouragement, or niceness can erase the potential for its inverse when the position of these characters necessarily implies a  darker side.