Let’s talk digital pets. Tamagotchis were too stressful for my little 8 year old heart. Keeping something alive apart from myself, are you kidding?! I could barely get dressed on my own back then, or now. And all my 8 year old friends were out there casually becoming digital parents, EXCUSE ME?!
The truth is, after watching Toy Story and the Brave Little Toaster, deep down I believed that all inanimate objects were actually alive. What was up with that time period and making us think that a bunch of plastic crap had thoughts and feelings?? Disney, answer for your crimes.
Listen, when I was 13 I cried real tears after I accidentally left the cap off a pen and “let it die”. Yes, I know 13 is too old to think pens are alive, shut up.
But if I’m being honest, I still do it. The other day I called my car a “poor sick baby” when I had to bring it in to get serviced.
So no, there was no way in hell I was going to take care of a Tamagotchi.
Anxiety makes digital parenting a lot. And as the eldest daughter who struggled with perfectionism and control over things, Tamagotchis were just a recipe for failure. I couldn’t risk it.
My sister and I did get a Furbi for Christmas one year, and everyone single member in our family regretted that gift. That possessed demon of a toy would start talking its satanic Furbi gibberish whenever it wanted. I stuffed it DEEP in the back of my closet to drown it out, but I’d still hear it chatting away to itself at 2am, who knows what that psycho wanted!!! I was too afraid to open the closet and ask him, obviously. It was the one toy I owned that I actively wished would toy un-alive itself or get toy murdered. And I swear it kept talking even after we took the batteries out.
I also had digital Neopets when I was 10, but eventually I just let them rot to death on the Internets. But I felt incredibly guilty about it the entire time, okay?! Did that guilt stop me from letting it happen? Absolutely not. It’s like the time I let my cactus plant (YES A CACTUS) die because I forgot to water it once, and felt so guilty about forgetting that I couldn’t possibly water it again. (Why yes I do have anxiety, why do you ask?!!!!!)
But I like to think my Neopets are still out there, somewhere, their digital spirits haunting me inside the fiber optic cables.