Author's Note: This article is in no way intended to insult the creators of Whyville at all. I promise. :)
Before last Saturday, I hadn't been on Whyville in months. To be frank, I didn't have the time to use the Internet as more than a research tool. I have some of the hardest classes right now, and we're already picking the classes for my senior year of high school. I have guard practice on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and competitions most Saturdays. I'm the President of my school's Video Club, and I have to prepare everything we need to do for that Tuesday's meeting. I just didn't have the time for it.
Until I remembered why exactly I kept logging into Whyville.
I'll be honest yet again, I didn't (and still don't) like most of Whyville. I didn't like the salary games and thought it was a pain my butt to get my salary to where it is today. I didn't like the crazy numbers of chat rooms, because the only ones that I ever went in was the Playground, the Airfield and the Sunroof, and the only reason I went there was because of the few friends I had made.
Now that I think about it, the only thing that I really even remotely liked about Whyville was the fact that it had a newspaper.
I remember when I first joined Whyville in 2000. I was overwhelmed by the amount of things that it had then. There wasn't five hundred chat rooms, but there was still more than enough. There was only one Beach, and it was filled with more than enough people, to the point where you could the "Overcrowded" message until someone left. It was always competition to get in. The population was less than a million, but it was still more than enough people than I even cared to meet. Akbar's wasn't overflowing with face parts, but there was more than enough. There was only one kind of money, and you could buy anything in Whyville with it. There was a major BBS, where nobody actually talked about Science or whatever the topics where. As much as we all begged and pleaded, there weren't any dogs or cats or pets of any sort, except the people who chose to dress up like them. There weren't any cars except the Taxi, which hosted major beauty contests and makeout parties. Club Y was the biggest thing in our virtual world and only the people who cared enough to get 1,000 clams could get in.
Everything seemed too big or too overdone in Whyville, but I found serenity in the Times.
I can only imagine what it feels like to be a newbie in Whyville now. There's a thousand chat rooms to pick from. There's four Beaches now, and not a single one gets the infamous "Overcrowded" message. The population is well over four million, and it's growing every second. Akbar's has more than forty-two thousand face parts, and I'm sure there are some that most of Whyville hasn't even seen. Clams are still the major source of money, but now you've got Pearls hogging the whole scene, too. Now you can't buy half the things in Whyville without something about Pearls popping up. The only BBS now is the one in the Times, and I'll assume that we're pretty on topic in there. Now you've got these little blobs we call pets and, yes, you have to pay for them in Pearls. Scions are the hot new car, and no one even goes in the Taxi anymore. Now nobody really cares enough about Club Y.
Now that I compare the two, I can't help but wonder . . .
Where does everyone hang out now that there isn't anyone at the Beaches? Do any of the rooms get the "Overcrowded" message anymore? Are there any face parts that no one besides the creator know about? Why Pearls? What happened to the old BBS system? Why now, after all the begging we had five years ago, did we get pets . . . if you can even call them that? Where do the beauty contests and makeout parties happen now that no one goes in the Taxi anymore? How many people actually care about Club Y anymore?
I think what I'm trying to say is that I miss the old Whyville. The Whyville with less that one million people. The Whyville with the overloaded Beaches. The Whyville where you could dress however and no one actually cared. The Whyville where, after people started to care about how you looked, the Prep vs. Goth wars took place. The Whyville that I used to know and love.
I got the State of Whyville message a few days ago. I read it and I couldn't help but feel smaller and smaller in this virtual world. I don't want more skins . . . I don't even want skins at all. I don't want to change the City Records profile look. I don't want the new version of Whyville. I don't want emoticons. I don't want a Robodome Botball thing . . . whatever that is. I don't want pet speech. I don't want any of if. All I want is the old Whyville . . . back in it's former, most awesome glory.
Now that I think about it, the only thing in Whyville that really hasn't had a facelift is the Times. It's still pretty much the same design, it's still written by the citizens and there's always a great variety of articles to choose from. You don't need any fancy experience or amazing talent or really anything like that to write for the Times. Heck, all you need to have is an e-mail address and at least some talent.
But you can grow with the Times. I know I have. In fact, the only way that I could get into an AP (Advanced Placement) 12th grade Language Arts class was by writing a paper. The teacher said that she was impressed with my writing, and I am fully convinced that the Times helped me to get into that AP class.
Sure, the Times has gone through some changes. I mean, the only really drastic thing that has happened was the fact that Bigfoot left us, and now we have a new Times Editor. I've heard people complain non-stop about the Editor. How she doesn't do a good job. How she doesn't pick good articles. How she had to change the day the Times comes out. How this and how that.
But you know what I think?
I think we're all, in some form, afraid of change.
We're afraid and not knowing what's going to come next. We're afraid of letting go on the past and moving forward to the future. I know I am, and I know the majority of you are, too. It isn't anything to be ashamed of, really.
How many of you have already graduated from high school, or are getting ready to? How many of you were scared to leave home for the first time? How many of you were afraid that you would have to support yourself for the rest of your life? How many of you have had to move? Even if it was 30 miles or 300 miles, I'm sure all of you were afraid for some reason or another. How about being afraid that you wouldn't make any new friends? How about being afraid of losing the friends you had then?
Honestly, we've all been afraid about a change that will happen in some point in our lives.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that even though I absolutely hate that Whyville had to change in some of the most drastic ways, I'll always turn to it for my favorite part - the Times. And even though I would hate to see the Times change, I know that eventually, it will have to. Whether it's the fact that the current writers will, in due course, get "too old" for Whyville and quit writing all together or the design just gets too plain and there's a change in the HTML or CSS, it's got to happen. And there isn't anything that we will be able to do about it.
I'm afraid for that change, but at least know it's coming will in some way soften the blow.
- Kaila
