Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Wow, I never thought about the Anubis and Horus... As much as I love the Anubis and the egyptian god Anubis, I definitely agree... Great point!

Neopets warning anyone for wishing others a happy holiday is pretty much a showing of ignorance on their part.
Personally, while not Christian, I don't find the fact that things on the site are labeled "Christmas", such as the paintbrush, offensive. I certainly wouldn't want them to change it just to suit my own desires, even if I did. That's no more right than saying that everything should be devoid of religion and be purely commercial.. Nor, should it preach a religion either. But this is my opinion, not everyone's and that is as it should be.
This is a case of "Agree to Disagree," most certainly, but if the petition is true and the person was warned for wishing someone a happy Yom Kipper, then I would sign it myself, because they would then be violating their own "unwritten" rules.

They're no Muslim Greetings on Neopets; if you're implying Kwanza is a Muslim holiday than you're wrong because I think it's an African tradition or festival celebrating the African culture.



I've sent in various suggestions to add Muslim greetings and I've never seen any appear on the site.

OK, I am throwing my two cents in. From extremely personal experience, I know that if just one person reports you for something you say on the chat boards, you can be frozen. My daughter was. I have an email from a staff person who admitted to me that there are not enought mods to police the boards and that they rely on the users to report wrong-doings--even if the users are wrong or biased or hateful or don't know the rules.

My guess: some anti-Jewish person didn't like this and reported the person for saying "Happy Yom Kippor." The mods didn't actually look to see that this was an innocent greeting, instead taking the reporter's word for it, and froze this poor person.

And, instead of claiming to abolish all religious stuff on Neopets, which obviously is not happening--Christianity definitely wins with all of the Christmas stuff and the crosses in people's shops, etc.--why not let any and all religion on Neopets? Nothing like devil worship, mind you, but why not allow all organized religion. What is the harm in that? I think one of the greatest things we, as human beings, could do is learn to accept and tolerate other people and their unique religions. And, accept does not mean agree with or be forced to practice, it simply means to be open enough to allow other people to think differently than you.

That's what is done in my daughter's school system. Instead of banning Christmas altogether (which is done in my niece's school--can't even have red and green decorations during the holidays), the school system goes out of its way to teach the children about and to celebrate all of the seasonal holidays--and if there is even one kid in the class who celebrates something other than the three main winter ones (Kwaanza, Christmas, Hanukah), the child and their parents are asked asked to come and celebrate it with the class. My daughter got to celebrate Ramadan in first grade. Perhaps, this will help her later in life to tolerate others who don't look the same as her or pray to the same "God" that she does.

Ammer, I'm sorry, I meant the Islamic greeting for the holiday on the boards is what I saw. Not that there's anything in the email greeting cards.

Medusa, I do find those petpet names to be disrespectful...

While I don't feel that religion, per se, should be discussed on the boards, I also don't feel that someone should get a warning or worse, frozen, for posting a simple greeting. There is a difference between someone posting "All Christians Come Here To Chat" and "Happy Easter" for example. The first post would (and has) definitely start arguments and end in anger and tears (seen them enough). The second is completely innocuous and is just being nice, in my opinion. No, I'm not Christian, but someone posting Happy whatever would never offend me. But that's beside the point.

Getting back to the petition that started all of this...We have one person's side -- theirs. We don't know all the facts of why there was a warning and how or why this person was frozen. So everything is pure speculation. But this has been a very interesting, polite conversation over something that can be very volatile.

Thank you all, I did learn some things tonight, most importantly the intelligence, politeness and high caliber of people here on PPT.

I think that would be great, having all religions welcome. I find other religions very interesting and I think it's great to learn about other people. I think the one problem would be argueing, but that happens anyway, and they could warn people for argueing and freeze after they do it again, as long as they say not to argue in the rules...

Tonu, you are so right about that--I didn't think of the arguing. Then, the only solution is to get rid of ALL religious content on Neopets--including all references to Christmas and Easter (shoot, I think Easter is way more religious than Christmas and look at all the Easter Neggs on the site), all user names with Jesus in them, and all shops that have those crosses in them. It's not fair, otherwise. And, for you all reading this, I consider myself to be Christian. And, I still don't think it is fair that I can say Merry Christmas on the chat boards over and over but my Jewish friend cannot say Happy Hanukah without fear of being frozen.

Oddly enough, I know exactly who started that. I came across this guy as I was doing my humanitarian "make fonts for people" rounds on the neoboards. He was freaking out because he says he typed "I'm Jewish" on the boards and he got frozen, and then created a new account, typed "I like guys, I'm gay", and got frozen again. His assumption was that Neopets is Racist. Ridiculous. I mailed him and said, "Talk of "liking" and dating anyone is against TOS, as well as religious talk." He wanted to argue the point, so I eventually had to block him.

Edit: Morningstar, I agree with your last post. But if anyone wants to get technical, both Christmas and Easter have Pagan roots... However Neopets expressly celebrates Christmas, and not Hannukah, Kwanzaa, any of the others. I was raised Jewish and consider myself now to be "Christian", and I can see the favortism from TNT, but it's far from racist, in my opinion. And being Hebrew by origin, I'd be offended if I saw an iota of racism in thir actions.

He didn't expect to be frozen for stating he was gay and he likes guys? Of it's no suprise at all he got frozen for saying that, because he's saying he likes people... Sure, saying he was gay didn't help, but still...

(And keep in mind NOTHING I said was against gays at all... I don't mind anyone being gay as I lived with two girls not long ago...)

Well, I for one am glad you don't have anything against people being gay, but enough of that...

Anyway, I think the point most people is missing is that the religious ban is for the chat boards. From what I can tell, it's a way to protect people using the boards from being harrassed by people who are "anti" anything. However, if you're going to freeze people for wishing someone good luck on Yom Kippur, then you also have to freeze anyone who throws out a blatant "Happy Easter" or "Merry Christmas".

The problem with that is that Christianity just happens to be the world's most predominant religion. Or it was last time I checked.

So, perhaps, to balance they should keep their ban on the boards, but at the same time, bring out more non-Christian themed greeting cards, items, etc. And yea, change the Christmas Paint Brush to something a little less... well, Christian.

Anyway, I'm rambling, and I think I lost the point of my message somewhere along the way... Oops.

Yes, Christianity, followed very closely by Muslim, which is left out completely from Neopets.
I, for one, don't believe for a second that TNT (or any singular TNT staff member) would warn or freeze for a simple "Happy Hanukkah", or any other religious holiday... If, however, this person happened to say somewhere in these posts that TNT was racist and they'll probably get frozen for starting the thread, then yes. And they'd deserve it. If someone started a Merry Christmas thread, and started spouting off that they'll get frozen for saying "Christ"-mas.. then yeah. They'd probably get frozen too.
There's no reason to discard the "Christmas" paint brush, or "horus" and "Anubis"... Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, but the religion that deieifed those names is an ancient and fallen one. Am I right in saying that that religion no longer exists? If I am, then a petpet named "Jesus", or "Mohammed" is far different than one named "Horus" or "Anubis".

Johnny, yes, ancient, yes, largely fallen but Yes, still does exist. Trust me on that one.

Well I wasn't sure, since I know alot of the "Pagan" religions held onto alot of that Egyptian stuff. Thanks for clarifying!

i agree with morningstar that this is probably due to lack of investigation than discrimination.

anubis and horus are ancient egyptian gods with jackal and hawk head respectively.

but whatever the reason is, whenever there's any discussion of religion, participants should be mentally prepared (to be iced). well-wishings shouldn't be a problem because neopets do it themselves over news for the major public holiday..chinese new year, christmas, easter...etc

#1) Thank you everconfused. If anything, it would be discrimination, not racism.

#2) There is a very interesting article (so I've been told ) dealing with this very subject and it is posted right here on PPT. http://www.pinkpt.com/index.php?page=neopiathedarkerside (second time I've been able bring it up in a short period. Good times!)

Coles notes: I did a little experiment on how TNT feels about certain topics and got some very interesting results.