Something curious happened on Neopets. The chat filters were, essentially, nonexistent.
It was a veritable free-for-all.
Things got pretty existential.
It was both dangerous for the kids on the message boards and pretty hilarious for all of the veteran players.
People could write nearly anything they wanted...
...including pet names.
Without mods, anything was possible.
Like posting the whole script of Bee Movie.
For the moment, the boards are down. Curious as to how this happened? This Tumblr user explained the history of Neopets control/ownership and gives a possible explanation:
At some point over the weekend, as a result of a facility move, the Neopets moderation and filter system went off line. During this period, our moderation team was not able to access and appropriately manage the Neopets community and inappropriate comments that were being made. Jumpstart has since taken down the boards and other areas affected as we work to get the moderation teams and filters functioning properly. This was an unfortunate incident due to a facility move related to our servers and not the result of any changes to our moderation teams and we apologize to the users that were affected. We will keep all users updated during the day. This was not a staffing issue, but a technology issue related to a move in facilities and our servers that control our moderation. Rest assured that we are taking this seriously and putting fail safe solutions in for the future.
It's unclear if Neopets will ever return to the idyllic state of the past. For now, maybe log in and check on your buddies.
Clarification
An earlier version/headline of this post stated that the confusion on the message boards was due to chat moderators being fired.