A couple corrections: First, the dress-up demo was re-delayed (not an unusual or unexpected occurrence in a zero-budget game project) and they've moved away from speculative release dates to avoid delays in the future. Please check out their discord (link in description) for more information! The Purple Parlor was not VIP exclusive, and therefore the entire Extreme Dreampark was not as well. Thank you again to Camila Reis from barbiegirlsblog.wixsite.com/blog for pointing this out!
Oh... my... goodness. I completely forgot about these Barbie MP3s. I always wanted one and I might've had one, but I know I for SURE had the orange HSM Disney Mix Stick...
i will never forget signing up up for this game in 2011 and then immediately getting hit with the notification that it was going to shut down in 2 weeks
@@lispeaks it was really funny especially since 7 year old me could barely process it but i remember really liking that hamster game as the world burned around me
Same here! I begged my parents so I could sign up for the website and when I finally got to, I saw that! I remember that I even asked for the game to come back for Christmas…
I saw this title and RAN. I'm right in that sweet spot of "too young to be a Millennial, too old to be Gen Z" and I feel like there's a lot of stuff from that period that was SUPER formative to my childhood that gets lost in the shuffle. I remember saving my allowance for WEEKS to buy a Barbie Girl mp3 player, only to be CRUSHED when the site literally never worked. Baby's first scam, lmao.
I'm a 2001 kid and same. I don't get a lot of the stuff teenagers do, and I'm a bit too young to relate to a lot of things Millennials talk about. It seems like this in-between generation has largely been ignored, and I'm so glad to see others talking about what was my childhood lol
I'm shocked that this is your first video. You seem like an experienced creator and this video was an absolute treat! Can't wait to see what you put out next
i remember this game and begging my mom to buy me the membership for it. this game is why i found out what it meant to be lesbian when i was 7 because someone asked me if i was “les bo an” and i asked my mom. good times
Omg this just unlocked a memory abt this game for me. Ppl would say les be friends or something like that, but it was code. And i started saying it thinking it was cool slang.
My friend and I had a sense of superiority of being ftp, looking down our noses at the "girls whose mommies and daddies spoiled them". Obviously we were just jealous, though also responding in kind to the elitism that having VIP gave off. You're right; I don't know what it was, but ftp players could FEEL the classism
My sense of ftp superiority came from the knowledge that while their parents were dishing out $$ for nothing but pixels, my mother was spending the exact same amount on actual physical barbies that long outlived the virtual world. So who's the real winner at the end of the day?
i remember feeling superior as a ftp animal jam player as a kid, and now here i am feeling good about not spending money in sky: cotl, time is a flat circle, imagine paying money for a free game
As a mod for the Barbie Girls Rewritten team we are aware of all the risks but so far Mattel hasn’t said anything to us about copyright issues but to stay safe we can take any donations unfortunately
I think donations are a grey area. You technically aren't being paid for IPs you don't own by taking donations. But it's better safe than sorry so I don't blame you for not even wanting to risk it.
@@FrenkTheJoy Yeah I agree honestly. We just don’t want to piss of Mattel. I wish we could take donations for server costs but it’s better safe than sorry.
During my time on barbiegirls (which was a lot) I remember the issue of grown men preying. It was a constant thing my cousins and I would encounter when playing the game, men straight up saying they were older men looking for younger girls, or offering to buy vip memberships if we would talk sexually with them. It was a very real issue. However you’re completely right, it’s an issue that is on every kids social site:(
I remember being in a room chat with other little girls and this man enter the chat and begin to said he could see us and begin to follow us around the game even when we disconnected from the chat. Me and the other kids we have to leave the game and reconnect to play together hours later and finally we didn't get the creepy man entering the room chat or following around the different places in the map were we try to chat whiteout him
I hated how so much cute stuff was VIP and I wasn’t privileged/spoiled and knew not to ask for money for this site. I swear this hyper-feminized site and the difference in VIP and not VIP players is what made me become an emo teenager 🤣
Meee. But I'm from Eastern Europe and didn't understand a lick of English so I wasn't even aware that there was something like a VIP 💀. I have no idea how I got around that world while knowing like 5 English words but I did.
I was so hurt they closed down the site that I talked to tech support on the Mattel website about it 😭 they told me it was very unlikely it would ever come back 💔
Omg the bullying in those virtual worlds from VIP members just unlocked some repressed memories. I used to play a virtual world called Smallworlds (which I honestly had no business using bc it was aimed at users who were 13+) and the VIP members used to always call the free members “noobs”. They would even make exclusive clubs within the world just for VIP members. It was so damn cliquey. I still regret using my Christmas money one year to pay for a VIP membership though, because the only difference was access to certain hairstyles and items for your avatar. 😂
@@lispeaks hey I’m super impressed about how good your first video was I’ve been doing UA-cam for about a year now and even I can’t do it as good as your level I mean I can edit pretty good but like the type of edits that I do are like not like video edits more like edits you put so much effort in this and I am so impressed. I understand why so many people subscribed to you not because you said so mainly because of how impressive you are. I honestly hope you grow in the future even if I forget about you I want to rediscover you one day and fall in love with you once again, if I ever lose this channel
@@he2collinator (in reply to a corrected typo) don’t be too depressed, i may have a brand new channel but i spent 5 years in college learning to be a video editor! this video followed almost a decade of under-appreciated and unappreciated video and animation work, a lot of which is on youtube on different channels. so don’t be too sad, this being my “first” video is just relative to this specific channel.
@@lispeaks I’m not depressed. I am super happy for you because you have so much potential and most channels. It takes a while to get that good of a start up. That is why I’m happy for you.
I'm from Argentina and I think is so true the part you talk about classism. In my country is a privilege pay with dollars. Imagine in the 2000 being a child who loves the game but just simply can't afford anything in it. I feel nostalgic but at the same time is sad to think that I could never have the possibility to play the game again as a VIP member
I'm from Brazil, so I relate a lot to what you said. That's the reason I mostly played Stardoll, it was easier to get free items (im the beginning, now you can't do anything without paying in that site).
yo me acuerdo que queria ser habbo club en tipo 2008 y mis viejos no me dejaban porque 1) no teniamos plata y 2) no confiaban en la pagina. siempre fui pobre y en ese juego se re notaba porque los looks free eran horribles y los demas te re excluian
I never realised how expensive those mp3 players were. I think I was either in 2nd or 3rd grade when I got one from my parents as a Christmas gift. I was grateful then but even more grateful now as a working adult lmao I think my mom still has mine stored somewhere despite us moving continents. Mine was blue and she had blonde hair and I remember having Paramore's Riot album on her! This was such a great video, thank you so much for the nostalgia trip! ❤
My sister and I used to love this game. It combined two of the things we liked the most as kids: MMO games and Barbie dolls. We even created an account for each of our Barbie dolls, but back then we couldn't buy the mp3 player to get VIP and since we're from South America it wasn't easily accessible to us. Sooo, I'm not proud of what we did to get access to VIP content, but we managed to steal a pair of accounts from VIP users. The security of this site was so bad, a couple of 8-10 year olds could hack into someone's accounts. For those not aware: basically, if you clicked that you forgot your password, you had to answer a security question, such as "What was the name of your first pet?" or some other basic question like that. All you had to do was guess random answers until you somehow got them right, and then you had access to a strangers account. It was that EASY.
I hated VIP mechanics so much when I was a little girl! There was one website I played on all the time called Fantage that had the same type of system. One day they allowed non-VIP members to buy, use and gain VIP money. I used up as much as I could on these pets you could own that took hours, or even days to hatch. Well, it turned out that the “free” VIP stuff only lasted for ONE DAY. The next day I was locked out of the VIP stuff I bought (clothes and items) and the VIP money. What was the most annoying to me was that despite the fact that I “bought” those pets, I wasn’t even allowed to hatch them! I pretty much never touched a game like that after that day, because it all felt so scummy.
I remember having similar experiense on Pandanda website. A free vip day and on next day everything beeing locked away. I remember not touching that website again and short time after the website was discontinued.
I think every browser-based virtual world had something like this, but I remember it was especially bad in Panfu, which allowed you to see other players' entire inventories!! I got bullied by soooooo many British children for not just wearing my member clothing, it's like they couldn't comprehend that I was literally too poor to pay to wear it outside of the member day that was literally just 2 days ago at the time HELP
It was the same with club penguin if I remember right, you could only wear your VIP clothes if your VIP was active, and I think it's the same with your igloo. There are rebooted sites of club penguin where vip is free, though the chat censor is so frustrating that after I was banned I didn't return 😔
The Barbie mp3 player was the peak of technology. I miss dressing up my mp3 player. If I could have a phone case that looked and acted as a dress up doll, I would.
I have a feeling though also that, at some point when Barbie Girls started offering more and more items that were exclusively VIP and left their "free to play" users in the dust, some of them started flocking towards other platforms like Zwinky and IMVU. I mean, I remember doing that myself - the MP3 players weren't available in my country and my family couldn't afford a VIP subscription so I just started spending more time on IMVU because it also provided me what BGirls couldn't, namely a chat tool with no restrictions, a much larger array of items to customize my character and, most importantly to a young girl, the feeling of being a "grown up" and belonging to a group of older people because IMVU was frequented mostly by teens and young adults (and predators, but that's a whole other story). But all in all, I feel like that also might have killed the site, people just switched to other platforms.
I remember becoming vip around late summer 2007. I loved my mp3 player and wished I still had it! The only gripe I personally remember about being vip is that I-a hyper sensitive child who didnt have many friends in school-found comfort and safety in these online virtual communities. I, even at just the age of 10, could FEEL the fakeness of other players who just wanted to add me because i was vip. I didnt see it as a classist thing from myself, as just people using me for what i had. Anyway, thank you for talking about this site, i miss it so much! Interesting take on all of this!
I would also, as an honorable mention, like to reminisce that my first song on my mp3 player was sweet escape by gwen stefani. Oh how i miss 2007 and late 2000s internet and culture, as well as my childhood. Thank you for this❤
I was completely unaware that the Barbie Girls game was a scam. I just enjoyed the dress up part of it. Also I got a free vip code from a doll I got from my birthday a longtime ago.
Watching this, I realized how similar the style of the renders looks to Build-a-Bearville. I wonder if the same artists worked on both. The promotional images and stills don't look the same, but the third-person view is SO similar. I didn't spend much time on Barbiegirls because I enjoyed other virtual worlds more, but I definitely remember it. Thanks for this!
@@PsychedelicCharm for a while it was. you had to go to build a bear and get the “adoption form” and that had a code. i think they moved out of that a little after.
I LOVED Barbiegirls growing up, I still think about it from time to time! I loved the look and the style, it just feels so nostalgic! But I agree with everything and every reason it tanked. Along with the classism I think this site was my first strong memory of experiencing racism as well. Since unlike Club Penguin you were a person with real skin tone choices, I always chose my own skin color (I am black😌✊🏾) and the way people straight up ignored me or were rude to me was shocking. I did a little experiment and changed to be white and the way I got such a different reaction…It made me sad and it still makes me sad sometimes thinking that I probably wasn’t the only black girl on the site facing a similar problem😔
Happened to me on most websites like that when I was a kid. I made some of my avatars white and it was different for sure. I spent the most time on tinierme but it happened in different sites
I was a proud black girl online, too. I always thought my black avatars were beautiful and I never once felt the need to pretend to be non-black. I remember watching my little sister play on an MMO called OurWorld and she changed her avatar's skin to white because some bitchy girls told her she had to if she wanted to befriend them. Even as a 9 year old I was enraged. I told her to change back at once because if those girls didn't want her because she was black they didn't deserve her at all. I also remember having a white boyfriend on that game (for like, one day, lol) and another white girl avatar telling me that he shouldn't date me because I was "ugly". The racism was just rampant and it still is.
I never experienced any sort of bullying for not being VIP... because barely anyone else was playing. It wasn't very popular in Italy. I swear I remember the café completely empty! I always wanted to play the minigame in the hair saloon in which you do the other person's makeup, but of the few girls present only a couple agreed :'( I knew another girl who had the MP3 player and an account, but she also never wanted to play together :/
I adorrrrred this site, I had the green mp3 because she reminded me of Avril Lavigne. I got it so I didn't have to use the pre-written text and I could buy better clothes. I so so so wish I could play it again, I played it for years. Fun memory, when someone would say "I'm a boy" and everyone in that location would freak out because that wasn't allowed lol. What a time.
1) It's SO refreshing to find people talking about this stuff!! Oh my gosh!! 2) your background music choices are magnificent. Queen's theme and also the Chocobo song like, filled me with joy.
This brings back a whole bunch of memories! Not just Barbie Girls, but Be Bratz, Miuchiz, Stardoll, Girlsense…ah the olden days of being a tween girl on the internet at peak virtual world marketing era. Edit: as I continued watching, I kept thinking of more games I used to play. Virtual Magic Kingdom, Nicktropolis, Build a Bearville, Millsberry, there were just so many back in the day. And that’s not even including the huge ones like Neopets, Club Penguin, and Webkinz.
Is it possible you remember a game similar to stardoll? It had a diy feature I believe, you could customize your home, buy clothes but the diy feature is the only part I remember that made it different? Its a longshot but Ive been looking for so long I thought I should ask.
@@doinkeykong Not sure if this is what you're thinking of but I remember i-Dressup being very similar to Stardoll and sounding like what you're describing. You could buy clothes from various stores and decorate your home.
I remember that the word shirt was censored on that website, I tried to tell a player I liked her shirt and I couldn't figure out a way around the censor 😭
I SCREAMED when I saw the thumbnail because I was recently thinking of this game among others and oh my god the nostalgia!!! Edit: THERE'S A DISCORD COMMUNITY. I literally can't express the joy I'm feeling rn.
Girl, this video is amazing!! Also, you have the perfect voice for narrating long-form video essays on girly media. It's giving me y2k Vanessa Hudgens glam. Your editing is great too!
i never heard of this website in my life, but the thought of an old website that was once popular, then getting completely wiped from the face of the internet with barely any evidence of its existence other than old footage and screenshots or old articles (and that really cool blog) frightens me on an existential level. love the video!
I remember loving it cause it let me be a really cool goth girl, which surprised me a lot then and even now considering the Barbie brand never really goes fully alternative.
May I suggest to you the Hard Rock Barbie line? My dad got me the 05 and 06 ones. They have tattoos and black and blonde/black hair respectively, and guitars. They’re amazing.
@@kyliemarie5347 OMG I didn't know these existed! My parents weren't really into Barbie dolls so I didn't follow the releases from when I was a kid. They're so beautiful.
The nostalgia of this game was kinda like whiplash, but I've gotta say I was thrilled when it ended, the toxic hierarchy system was overwhelming and unavoidable. Being friends with VIP girls, only for them to openly laugh at you when they invited you over, before kicking you out of their rooms. And I remember leaving multiple times bc the chat was so restricted you couldn't get to know anyone, it was so canned it was aggravating. For some reason I thought the game came out earlier, like 2003-2004, so these dates kinda shocked me. Other girls fashion chat games I'd like you to review are Pixie Hollow and AllGirlArcade. I was there for the end of the Pixie Hollow and the beginning of AllGirlArcade, oh the memories, oh the membership begging I did.
no longer a girl but 1. i was OBSESSED with this site as a kid, thank you So much for covering this!!! and 2. Girl. I was also really into the shins during that time as a kid. im shaking your hand right now.
i wasn’t a barbie girls user, but i was (kind of) conscious as a kid in the 2010s, and i think with large corporate intelligence, mattel sensed the large wave of the “not like other girls” and “tomboy” ideas that infected the 2010s and that i was guilty of, probably the nail in the coffin solidifying their idea that it’s not really worth it for repairs to the site.
Once again the video turned out amazing!! I am so glad the blog archive was so useful and I loved seeing my screenshots being used, especially my Barbie Girls room as the background behind you! Barbie Girls wasn't perfect but I think we all miss it a lot! 😊
i remember being SO FRUSTRATED me and my friend could never find each other even though we were at the same place. now i believe it was because we were plebs :')
Barbiegirls was a memory buried REALLY deep, but seeing this video come up in my recommended brought it all rushing back! Thank you for reminding me! I never played much, but I used to love online mmos for kids like this. Club penguin was the one that really hooked me, but barbiegirls, bearville, and so many others were such big parts of my childhood
I remember reading a Total Girl magazine that contained an interview with The Veronicas who had their own custom Barbie Girls MP3 players, and that's what tempted me to sign up. I never got my own MP3, but this video has unlocked so many childhood memories!
I remember this so vividly because my mother couldn’t afford the Barbie girl MP3 but found it at the goodwill and literally BEGGED her to get it for me 😭 best day of my f*cking life!
This is a masterpiece! I had no idea this existed before your essay, but it's fascinating nonetheless since I am interested in virtual worlds and MMOs. You got a wide perspective on the game by being both free to play and later VIP. The excellent, entertaining editing, the witty, informative script and your presentation all make this a really great video! Your Mattel rage segment was funny, and I wasn't ready for the end credits dance! 🤣🤣😂 As much as I love ASMR, that type of video tends to be simple and straight forward. This really showed what you are capable of as a content creator and I'm really impressed. When the outfit demo launches, maybe you can do a video on it? Either here or on your ASMR channel. I for one would like to see that. If there's enough content there to justify it, and you want to. And please don't ever be discouraged! I hope you make more of these essays, and I hope this one is a hit! It deserves to be! Excellent work Lilly! I'm proud of you.
That’s a great idea, Daryl. Maybe I could even do both. I’m getting a lot of encouraging feedback already, and I am finding a lot more source material for my next topic than I expected to. Thank you so much, you are a true fan and I appreciate that immensely 💖
I remember playing the game as a kid. I hated it because I was 1. poor & couldn't afford the cool stuff and 2. got bored of it really quickly. I preferred webkinz because I got a free one from a mardi gras parade.
That little McDonald's Barbie stereo was played to death in my childhood, it never died somehow and I absolutely made my mother seeth with parental rage whenever I'd sneak up on her and play it in her ear.
The first time I ever saw the MP3 players in stores they were marked down for like $5 😂 but I used that MP3 player for years until it completely broke.
Perhaps I'm seeing these 2000s games with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but there's something about the art style and overall vibe that made them captivating, and I just don't feel that mystique anymore with newer games that are allegedly far more predatory in the way they make profit *looking at Roblox*. This was a nice breakdown and I'm glad you put into words how I've always felt about these girly y2k games.
I played this because my mom worked for Mattel at the time. Otherwise it was expensive and I probably wouldn’t have known about it. She didn’t buy me the mp3 player. I don’t recall anything being at Walmart for this game. Seriously seems like a fever dream, definitely forgot about it until now! It was fun to play, but I kept forgetting my login. I played in 2007-2008, later I remembered it to find it gone. My go to computer game was Webkinz
you unlocked so many of my old, *old* memories with this video omg i remember dressing my doll up, the trash loading times and practically BEGGING my mom to buy me VIP, but she (wisely) never accepted ahah... great video!
I was a big tomboy as a kid and was obsessed with these kind of virtual worlds. I’ve never even heard of this one! I think that says a lot about the alienation of a lot of potential players.
I used to play this as a kid- thank you for reminding me of its existence! Also Wow i can’t believe this is your first video. So well spoken and wonderfully organized! ❤
What's funny is I remember as a kid always seeing ads for Barbiegirls on the main Barbie website but I never bothered playing it, funnily enough, because the load times were way too bad for me as a little kid who had a really bad attention span on websites. Even though I never played it, this was such an incredibly well made video! I'd love to hear you talk about other obscure MMO games online like the Nickelodeon one or even Beanie Babies 2.0! :D
chat blockers like that are always so funny because like. what pre-teen knows the inappropriate meaning of 'come'?, i would've just been incredibly confused why i couldn't use a regular word and it would probably cause me to find out the 'adult' meaning purely out of curiosity as to why I couldn't use it
i literally have a stardoll video planned HOWEVER my relationship to stardoll is exclusively as a site that directly or indirectly killed the sites that i love the most so it’s not going to be exactly…. loving
man i remember my sister n i loving barbiegirls and then it got replaced by frickin STARGIRL.... i think you should obliterate that site. love and light
Watching this video again after your more recent PETA games video is giving me "Early Installment Weirdness" vibes. You're really evolved technology wise!
oh god I was OBSESSED with this, my mom refused to give me a more expensive MP3 just cause it was Barbie so I spent my days dreaming of a VIP subscription (which she was also against)
OH MY GOD I SAW THE THUMBNAIL AND I SWEAR I'VE NEVER CLICKED ON A VIDEO FASTER. when i was a kid my then-bff had one of the mp3 players. i remembered this recently and i've been haunted by the memory because i didn't think i would ever see it again!! i didn't remember what purpose it served at all, i just had a hazy idea of what it looked like so i couldn't even search for it on the internet. this feels like a solved mystery to me 😭💗 your channel is truly a blessing ✨
Wonderful job with the video! I’ve been craving a Barbiegirls retrospective and never clicked so fast. Your depth of research and attention to detail is noted
It's not much, but I have recently discovered your content and I am obsessed. You're so eloquent and articulate, and truthfully I really appreciate your hard work on content like this. Thank you so much.
I can definitely see how hard you worked on this research, this video is amazing! I never got to play on barbiegirls as a kid because I thought it was for "grown kids only" (I don't know where I got that from, I can't remember if my parents used to tell me this sort of stuff to keep me away from online spaces). I'm really excited for the rewritten project, I hope it goes well. ;_;
the aesthetic and design did seem more mature since they were competing with bratz which when i was young was described as the more mature version of barbie because of their designs and more teen based fashion
This game has been living in my head rent-free for over a decade now and im so glad someone finally vide about it! I used to play so many social games that maybe I should make video essays too because a lot are lost info and forgotten history edit: no way! u did one on girlsense too !!
You're new but have completed captions? Legend behaviour! And hey, I can't wait to see you get more comfortable on the screen, because the content is great and you seem really nice and calm!
I think it's so cool that most of the people archiving this stuff were kids.... i love thinking of little virtual world obsessed kids on the family computer preserving history 😭 ....... also that eyebrow ring is extremely cute 😍
My first experience with this game was making my avatar resemble how I looked at that time, then going out in public and another user called me a nerd :(
I LOVED this game! Even if I was a free peasant who couldn’t buy anything 😜😜 I remember taking the Fashionista quiz multiple times until I got every necklace. ✨✨
Wait isn’t encouraging kids to ask parents as a marketing technique actually illegal? Can’t remember if i read it in GDPR or ICC communication code, but advertising to children is a slippery slope, especially if europe is involved. (That being said, rules like that probably didn’t exist then)
Oh my god, I genuinely thought nobody was going to talk about this, this was one of my favourite games as a kid! Also, I'm subscribing! You're an amazing creator, and I have no idea how you manage to be a new creator! You obviously have done loads of research and really know your way around this kind of thing, I'm really excited for this to become a successful channel!
i'm only a few minutes in and i'm already loving this your commentary style and voice is so cute, i'll definitely check out the rest of your stuff afterwards :D
You've just unlocked the kind of nostalgia I've thought I'd never feel, lol. I remember accidentally stumbling upon this site, most likely bcs it was promoted on the main Barbie page, and LOVING IT. I have so many of the 'typical' memories of being a small, non-native English speaking child; Playing such sites while not understanding the language and navigating them blind, frequent chat misunderstandings but both parties trying their best to find a way to communicate, the loading times being even longer cuz Eastern European countries had slower net, not being able to upgrade due to lack of products being sold in your area/buy the online currency cuz dollars were too expensive to exchange your real life currency into and being really bummed out about it. THE JEALOUSY, oh MAN. "How come the kids in the US get to enjoy it to the fullest and not me in my own, non western country??" ...But also the utter fascination and awe at how cool everything looks and feels! Very few sites like these existed in the digital landscape for Slavic internet users at the time, so being able to enter the English ones always added to the "cool" factor. There was so much variety! Ended up daydreaming a lot about being from the US and being able to get all the things I wanted in BG, really believing it would be that simple... And MAN what a perfect time capsule of mid-2000's graphic design+trends BG is! Even though it was so aggressively "GIRL", it helped spark my interest in fashion/design and start appreciating feminine things in general. I was a huge tomboy and an NLOG ("Not like other girls") growing up and these sites were a guilty pleasure. Now that I'm an adult, I can appreciate them to the fullest while acknowledging their (many) faults. It's really nice seeing people talk about these places, not letting them become forgotten. They really were special despite their imperfections...
i met you today and just kept clicking on random videos from you that appeared on the side of the screen i really thought you've been on youtube for maybe 4 years, you seem so experienced, i'm in love with your channel
Those loading times were indeed horrible lol. I remember having to go to the library to play this game since they had better internet than our house did (we still had dial-up at the time which I'm sure also didn't help), but even then the site was still terribly slow, haha.
OKAY BIG FAN HERE AND THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE VIDEO OF ALL UA-cam! Plus missing this game so much, I'm actually a boy who played it when I was a kid and after all this time still remember and want to play it again like a lot. BTW LOVE THE ENDING LIKE "STAY AWAY OF OUR (fans) PATH MATTEL!" I remember being sooo mad after the shutdown. So much hope now and wishing luck to the team behind BGR Project!
oh my!! I just got your video recommended and I got flodded with nostalgia. I used to play this game so much in it's early days but I could never remember enough about it to really look back at it. So your video finally brought this back to me. Seeing those avatars, the room, the chat options, the stores again is so wild! Thank you so much for making this video and giving back a name and face to such a big part of a short time in my childhood!
Oh! And I remember this not-very-popular site where you buy an animal stuffie, and along with it, you are "buying a star". By registering your toy, you'd be assigned a random star in the sky. I will say, the fact that the site attempted to track that particular star (supposedly), to help you know when you might be able to see "your" star in your area. My memories of this site are pretty vague, and I don't remember what the name of the thing was. I think the reason that I don't have many memories of it was that the site? Was freaking Boring!!! There were a few mini games, and you could track the star. Maybe you could feed your animal? But as far as I remember, there were no lobbies or anything. If there were, they weren't particularly great. And Webkinz and Neopets probably had much better games at the time anyway. I had a stuffed white owl that was quite soft (I named it "Snowy"), and a brown monkey (don't remember what I named him) who had more of a... plasticy hair fur? The monkey was Not Comfortable to Hug! I'd say the site was trying to be like Webkinz, but man, it just wasn't that fun 🤷. They definitely went defunct before Webkinz did. Tbh Webkinz should revamp itself and start selling again. I think they'd be able to get a decent audience of nostalgic adults and a new wave of kids. If I figure out the name of the brand and site, I'll let you know!
This is amazing. I was half convinced that my memory of that particular slightly angular-headed incarnation of Barbie was just a fevered dream in between the My Scene and Bratz phases in my teenage years... until I came across this video. Thank you for this amazing video essay! Also, kudos to the amazing quality in production, research, and style!
lmao baby barbie lesbians!!! that was me!!! the dream homosocial multiplayer game lol. still, i didn't play for long bc of the paywall, it looked so promising i still find myself thinking about the game and wanting to customize my avatar. thanks for the video! it's so hard to find footage and analysis surrounding barbiegirls!
@@lispeaks yeah i found out 💔 but i managed to join the discord and follow their ig ! it's such a great project !!! i'm sure it'll be great 😁❤ and yes homosocial is an amazing word it changed my life lol
I really would have loved the queer implications of BarbieGirls to be explored in further detail. I mean, I know it was a 2000s game created by likely adult men and marketed to cis-hetero tween girls, but cmon folks, think about it for a second: a world consisting of only girls with NO boys allowed. Girls befriending girls, hanging out with girls and developing relationships with girls. Like that has to be the gayest thing ever hahahaha. It would have been so interesting to explore what it was like to be a young queer girl playing a game that's trying soooo hard to impose heteronormative ideals but is still dripping with lesbian subtext
I had one of the mp3 players! I remember going on the website too. The song was like bangin though. Also, I love how this was during the peak of scene girls era, so there was many scene girl inspired looks, especially the hair styles.
Incredible delivery and pacing, really enjoyed this video even though I have never played this game! Just saying the doll you showed when mentioning the Fashionistas line isn't from 2009 and was released a lot more recently, the current Barbie Fashionistas are a lot different to the ones from the 2000s
I had one of these! Absolutely loved it and the website. Took the mp3 player with me everywhere and then lost it. I still haven't found it. That song on it still lives rent free in my head. Ever so often I find my self humming it.
I. Completely. Forgot. This existed. Until i saw the thumbnail for this. I WAS OBSESSED WITH THIS!! I even had that funky little mp3 player that i almost immediately lost! Agghhh i have to binge your entire channel now for lost memories. I remember having like, a redheaded mp3 player? And my only memory of actually having it in my hands is of me fumbling around with it, pulling back the edges of the hair, and hearing that plastic _snack!_ as it snaps back into place. And then listening to that Barbie theme on REPEAT. I cant believe i forgot that tune existed because when i say repeat, i mean _REPEAT._
it's finals week for me and i'm super stressed out, but your videos are so soothing to me. it seems like we played a lot of the same games as kids for the same reasons! i'm really looking forward to checking out the rest of your videos
i like your voice, you sound like a gossipy victorian baker telling me about the murderer you saw tossing a basket of limbs into the harbor a night ago. its comforting and nice.
Wow what a blast from the past. That was my favorite website hands down as a kid. I believe I started playing right when the beta came out. Even without VIP I remember having a good time. Eventually I got my pink Barbie MP3 player (which gave me VIP) and it was my pride and joy. I really miss those days…
You just unlocked a totally hidden memory for me. I REMEMBER THE MP3 PLAYER!!! mine only had 2 songs which was "Our Song" by Taylot Swift and another song I can't remember LMFAO but I loved that mp3 player and I loved Barbie Girls even though I didn't play it as much!
A couple corrections: First, the dress-up demo was re-delayed (not an unusual or unexpected occurrence in a zero-budget game project) and they've moved away from speculative release dates to avoid delays in the future. Please check out their discord (link in description) for more information!
The Purple Parlor was not VIP exclusive, and therefore the entire Extreme Dreampark was not as well. Thank you again to Camila Reis from barbiegirlsblog.wixsite.com/blog for pointing this out!
Do MILLSBERRY
please make one on spark city world
Oh... my... goodness. I completely forgot about these Barbie MP3s. I always wanted one and I might've had one, but I know I for SURE had the orange HSM Disney Mix Stick...
Did the remake have any progress?
i will never forget signing up up for this game in 2011 and then immediately getting hit with the notification that it was going to shut down in 2 weeks
oh my god.
@@lispeaks it was really funny especially since 7 year old me could barely process it but i remember really liking that hamster game as the world burned around me
Same here! I begged my parents so I could sign up for the website and when I finally got to, I saw that! I remember that I even asked for the game to come back for Christmas…
same thing happened to me, only that it shut down right after i convinced my parents to buy me one of the mp3 dressup dolls
@@lispeaks
Ditto!
I saw this title and RAN. I'm right in that sweet spot of "too young to be a Millennial, too old to be Gen Z" and I feel like there's a lot of stuff from that period that was SUPER formative to my childhood that gets lost in the shuffle. I remember saving my allowance for WEEKS to buy a Barbie Girl mp3 player, only to be CRUSHED when the site literally never worked. Baby's first scam, lmao.
What a clear description of people born in 1998-2002 you mentioned there.
I'm a 2001 kid and same. I don't get a lot of the stuff teenagers do, and I'm a bit too young to relate to a lot of things Millennials talk about. It seems like this in-between generation has largely been ignored, and I'm so glad to see others talking about what was my childhood lol
I’m solidly gen z ‘04 and this stuff was part of mine too
“Too young be millennial, too old be Gen Z” that called “Zillennial”
As a 2000 baby that is a perfect description of us 😂 too young to be a millennial, too old to be a Gen Z. We’re a perfect mix.
I'm shocked that this is your first video. You seem like an experienced creator and this video was an absolute treat! Can't wait to see what you put out next
@@MeowMeow_95_ i used to do this with my sister when we were kids
@@torontomug same
Agreed
WTF first video? this is incredible! Reminded me of my days at neopets... that was the equivalent for me and later on, club penguin
I didn’t even know it was here first she’s that good hahahaha
i remember this game and begging my mom to buy me the membership for it. this game is why i found out what it meant to be lesbian when i was 7 because someone asked me if i was “les bo an” and i asked my mom. good times
How did your mom react?
@@redpepper5984rest in piece 🕊️
@@redpepper5984peace* fuck
Omg this just unlocked a memory abt this game for me. Ppl would say les be friends or something like that, but it was code. And i started saying it thinking it was cool slang.
@@mazeyzz God bless you that's adorable
PixieHollow, Barbiegirls, everydaygirl, moviestarplanet, Webkinz, Tygirls, Club Penguin, and Toon Town were my childhood omg.
Yes Ty girls!! I completely forgot about those dolls.
I still play toontown lol
Remember playing Pixie Hollow and Barbie girl when they were good with free players And then after that they want you to pay for everything
pixie hollow and tygirlz were underrated bangers
Tygirlz was my fav! I will never get rid of the dolls I own
My friend and I had a sense of superiority of being ftp, looking down our noses at the "girls whose mommies and daddies spoiled them". Obviously we were just jealous, though also responding in kind to the elitism that having VIP gave off. You're right; I don't know what it was, but ftp players could FEEL the classism
My sense of ftp superiority came from the knowledge that while their parents were dishing out $$ for nothing but pixels, my mother was spending the exact same amount on actual physical barbies that long outlived the virtual world. So who's the real winner at the end of the day?
You’re basically describing your first experience with class consciousness.
i remember feeling superior as a ftp animal jam player as a kid, and now here i am feeling good about not spending money in sky: cotl, time is a flat circle, imagine paying money for a free game
As a mod for the Barbie Girls Rewritten team we are aware of all the risks but so far Mattel hasn’t said anything to us about copyright issues but to stay safe we can take any donations unfortunately
I think donations are a grey area. You technically aren't being paid for IPs you don't own by taking donations. But it's better safe than sorry so I don't blame you for not even wanting to risk it.
@@FrenkTheJoy Yeah I agree honestly. We just don’t want to piss of Mattel. I wish we could take donations for server costs but it’s better safe than sorry.
Thank you for all your efforts 💖
You could always try like having individual kofi accounts or something
ive been waiting for this since shutdown holy shit
During my time on barbiegirls (which was a lot) I remember the issue of grown men preying. It was a constant thing my cousins and I would encounter when playing the game, men straight up saying they were older men looking for younger girls, or offering to buy vip memberships if we would talk sexually with them. It was a very real issue. However you’re completely right, it’s an issue that is on every kids social site:(
@@lukeessman8030 absolutely not
@@lordfarquaad380ikr
That is terrifying
I remember being in a room chat with other little girls and this man enter the chat and begin to said he could see us and begin to follow us around the game even when we disconnected from the chat. Me and the other kids we have to leave the game and reconnect to play together hours later and finally we didn't get the creepy man entering the room chat or following around the different places in the map were we try to chat whiteout him
@@lordfarquaad380whatd he say?
I am so sad for all the sad little girls that felt left out bc they weren’t able to have a vip account of this stupid, predatory site 😭
Me ✋🏽😭
I remember when I was younger I begged my mom through the bathroom door to pay for the VIP account.
I hated how so much cute stuff was VIP and I wasn’t privileged/spoiled and knew not to ask for money for this site. I swear this hyper-feminized site and the difference in VIP and not VIP players is what made me become an emo teenager 🤣
Meee. But I'm from Eastern Europe and didn't understand a lick of English so I wasn't even aware that there was something like a VIP 💀. I have no idea how I got around that world while knowing like 5 English words but I did.
I was one of them 😭
I, a 28 year old man just finished watching a video talking about a now defunct MMO site based on Barbie... and I loved it!
Have you ever played it?
@Bicho-preguiça nope. Just loved the ads, though... as well as the design of the avatars.
I’m 29, but being a queer non binary person, I was huge into my early 2000s girly shit so I RACED into this video lol
own it, I happen to be female but I feel this comment very much lol
Same. But im 14 so idk if thats as subversive
I was so hurt they closed down the site that I talked to tech support on the Mattel website about it 😭 they told me it was very unlikely it would ever come back 💔
bet the tech support people had to break a lot of girls' hearts that day 😔
Omg the bullying in those virtual worlds from VIP members just unlocked some repressed memories. I used to play a virtual world called Smallworlds (which I honestly had no business using bc it was aimed at users who were 13+) and the VIP members used to always call the free members “noobs”. They would even make exclusive clubs within the world just for VIP members. It was so damn cliquey. I still regret using my Christmas money one year to pay for a VIP membership though, because the only difference was access to certain hairstyles and items for your avatar. 😂
THIS ATE SO HARD, i loved it!! Glad the photos of my MP3 were useful!! :)
you and the entire BGR discord have been insanely helpful and i can’t thank you enough!
Oh hey bestie!
@@lispeaks hey I’m super impressed about how good your first video was I’ve been doing UA-cam for about a year now and even I can’t do it as good as your level I mean I can edit pretty good but like the type of edits that I do are like not like video edits more like edits you put so much effort in this and I am so impressed. I understand why so many people subscribed to you not because you said so mainly because of how impressive you are. I honestly hope you grow in the future even if I forget about you I want to rediscover you one day and fall in love with you once again, if I ever lose this channel
@@he2collinator (in reply to a corrected typo) don’t be too depressed, i may have a brand new channel but i spent 5 years in college learning to be a video editor! this video followed almost a decade of under-appreciated and unappreciated video and animation work, a lot of which is on youtube on different channels. so don’t be too sad, this being my “first” video is just relative to this specific channel.
@@lispeaks I’m not depressed. I am super happy for you because you have so much potential and most channels. It takes a while to get that good of a start up. That is why I’m happy for you.
the editing!! the research!! the makeup!! the nostalgia!! i ADORE
I'm from Argentina and I think is so true the part you talk about classism. In my country is a privilege pay with dollars. Imagine in the 2000 being a child who loves the game but just simply can't afford anything in it. I feel nostalgic but at the same time is sad to think that I could never have the possibility to play the game again as a VIP member
I'm from Brazil, so I relate a lot to what you said. That's the reason I mostly played Stardoll, it was easier to get free items (im the beginning, now you can't do anything without paying in that site).
hoooo boy, classism in argentina, that is smth else for sure. mundo gaturro had a lot of classism going on and we all thought it was normal xD
@@valennina7965 era más accesible igual el pasaporte en mundo gaturro eso hay que aceptarlo
yo me acuerdo que queria ser habbo club en tipo 2008 y mis viejos no me dejaban porque 1) no teniamos plata y 2) no confiaban en la pagina. siempre fui pobre y en ese juego se re notaba porque los looks free eran horribles y los demas te re excluian
@@lucy4666 luego salieron las copias donde todo era gratis jahshdjaj
I never realised how expensive those mp3 players were. I think I was either in 2nd or 3rd grade when I got one from my parents as a Christmas gift. I was grateful then but even more grateful now as a working adult lmao I think my mom still has mine stored somewhere despite us moving continents. Mine was blue and she had blonde hair and I remember having Paramore's Riot album on her! This was such a great video, thank you so much for the nostalgia trip! ❤
FINALLY SOMEONE IS GIVING BARBIEGIRLS THE TIME IT DESERVES
My sister and I used to love this game. It combined two of the things we liked the most as kids: MMO games and Barbie dolls.
We even created an account for each of our Barbie dolls, but back then we couldn't buy the mp3 player to get VIP and since we're from South America it wasn't easily accessible to us.
Sooo, I'm not proud of what we did to get access to VIP content, but we managed to steal a pair of accounts from VIP users. The security of this site was so bad, a couple of 8-10 year olds could hack into someone's accounts.
For those not aware: basically, if you clicked that you forgot your password, you had to answer a security question, such as "What was the name of your first pet?" or some other basic question like that. All you had to do was guess random answers until you somehow got them right, and then you had access to a strangers account. It was that EASY.
I hated VIP mechanics so much when I was a little girl! There was one website I played on all the time called Fantage that had the same type of system. One day they allowed non-VIP members to buy, use and gain VIP money. I used up as much as I could on these pets you could own that took hours, or even days to hatch. Well, it turned out that the “free” VIP stuff only lasted for ONE DAY. The next day I was locked out of the VIP stuff I bought (clothes and items) and the VIP money. What was the most annoying to me was that despite the fact that I “bought” those pets, I wasn’t even allowed to hatch them! I pretty much never touched a game like that after that day, because it all felt so scummy.
I remember having similar experiense on Pandanda website. A free vip day and on next day everything beeing locked away. I remember not touching that website again and short time after the website was discontinued.
I think every browser-based virtual world had something like this, but I remember it was especially bad in Panfu, which allowed you to see other players' entire inventories!! I got bullied by soooooo many British children for not just wearing my member clothing, it's like they couldn't comprehend that I was literally too poor to pay to wear it outside of the member day that was literally just 2 days ago at the time HELP
@@undead-pPanfu was so weird!! I remember that members could be baby pandas so the hospital was full of people roleplaying giving birth to pandas
It was the same with club penguin if I remember right, you could only wear your VIP clothes if your VIP was active, and I think it's the same with your igloo. There are rebooted sites of club penguin where vip is free, though the chat censor is so frustrating that after I was banned I didn't return 😔
I love Fantage frrr
I wasnt old enough to understand asking my parents for money to play more, I always thought it was broken LMAO
Yeah I think it was the same for me too😂
The Barbie mp3 player was the peak of technology. I miss dressing up my mp3 player. If I could have a phone case that looked and acted as a dress up doll, I would.
I have a feeling though also that, at some point when Barbie Girls started offering more and more items that were exclusively VIP and left their "free to play" users in the dust, some of them started flocking towards other platforms like Zwinky and IMVU. I mean, I remember doing that myself - the MP3 players weren't available in my country and my family couldn't afford a VIP subscription so I just started spending more time on IMVU because it also provided me what BGirls couldn't, namely a chat tool with no restrictions, a much larger array of items to customize my character and, most importantly to a young girl, the feeling of being a "grown up" and belonging to a group of older people because IMVU was frequented mostly by teens and young adults (and predators, but that's a whole other story). But all in all, I feel like that also might have killed the site, people just switched to other platforms.
You’re unlocking core memories of my life as an adolescent/pubescent impressionable individual that I’ve kept locked away for many years! OMG
@@AzaleaChan13 Honestly, I also forgot Zwinky existed until recently when I just randomly remembered it LOL
I remember becoming vip around late summer 2007. I loved my mp3 player and wished I still had it! The only gripe I personally remember about being vip is that I-a hyper sensitive child who didnt have many friends in school-found comfort and safety in these online virtual communities. I, even at just the age of 10, could FEEL the fakeness of other players who just wanted to add me because i was vip. I didnt see it as a classist thing from myself, as just people using me for what i had. Anyway, thank you for talking about this site, i miss it so much! Interesting take on all of this!
I would also, as an honorable mention, like to reminisce that my first song on my mp3 player was sweet escape by gwen stefani. Oh how i miss 2007 and late 2000s internet and culture, as well as my childhood. Thank you for this❤
I was completely unaware that the Barbie Girls game was a scam. I just enjoyed the dress up part of it. Also I got a free vip code from a doll I got from my birthday a longtime ago.
Watching this, I realized how similar the style of the renders looks to Build-a-Bearville. I wonder if the same artists worked on both. The promotional images and stills don't look the same, but the third-person view is SO similar.
I didn't spend much time on Barbiegirls because I enjoyed other virtual worlds more, but I definitely remember it. Thanks for this!
Was that website pay-to-play? I don't remember because I never signed up for it.
@@PsychedelicCharm for a while it was. you had to go to build a bear and get the “adoption form” and that had a code. i think they moved out of that a little after.
oh wow I remember that one 😂 I never actually bought a bear I found a code on the fucken floor in the mall
I LOVED Barbiegirls growing up, I still think about it from time to time! I loved the look and the style, it just feels so nostalgic! But I agree with everything and every reason it tanked. Along with the classism I think this site was my first strong memory of experiencing racism as well. Since unlike Club Penguin you were a person with real skin tone choices, I always chose my own skin color (I am black😌✊🏾) and the way people straight up ignored me or were rude to me was shocking. I did a little experiment and changed to be white and the way I got such a different reaction…It made me sad and it still makes me sad sometimes thinking that I probably wasn’t the only black girl on the site facing a similar problem😔
Happened to me on most websites like that when I was a kid. I made some of my avatars white and it was different for sure. I spent the most time on tinierme but it happened in different sites
Smh that’s why they got scammed anyways
I was a proud black girl online, too. I always thought my black avatars were beautiful and I never once felt the need to pretend to be non-black. I remember watching my little sister play on an MMO called OurWorld and she changed her avatar's skin to white because some bitchy girls told her she had to if she wanted to befriend them. Even as a 9 year old I was enraged. I told her to change back at once because if those girls didn't want her because she was black they didn't deserve her at all.
I also remember having a white boyfriend on that game (for like, one day, lol) and another white girl avatar telling me that he shouldn't date me because I was "ugly". The racism was just rampant and it still is.
I never experienced any sort of bullying for not being VIP... because barely anyone else was playing. It wasn't very popular in Italy. I swear I remember the café completely empty!
I always wanted to play the minigame in the hair saloon in which you do the other person's makeup, but of the few girls present only a couple agreed :'(
I knew another girl who had the MP3 player and an account, but she also never wanted to play together :/
I adorrrrred this site, I had the green mp3 because she reminded me of Avril Lavigne. I got it so I didn't have to use the pre-written text and I could buy better clothes. I so so so wish I could play it again, I played it for years.
Fun memory, when someone would say "I'm a boy" and everyone in that location would freak out because that wasn't allowed lol. What a time.
I don't care what anyone says, I'm a boy and I love Barbie. (And Monster High.) It's a shame how that kind of thing still isn't really allowed.
I was almost convinced I imagined this game as a kid because I could not find it. This unlock so many memories!
1) It's SO refreshing to find people talking about this stuff!! Oh my gosh!!
2) your background music choices are magnificent. Queen's theme and also the Chocobo song like, filled me with joy.
This brings back a whole bunch of memories! Not just Barbie Girls, but Be Bratz, Miuchiz, Stardoll, Girlsense…ah the olden days of being a tween girl on the internet at peak virtual world marketing era.
Edit: as I continued watching, I kept thinking of more games I used to play. Virtual Magic Kingdom, Nicktropolis, Build a Bearville, Millsberry, there were just so many back in the day. And that’s not even including the huge ones like Neopets, Club Penguin, and Webkinz.
Omg I played girlsense too ! I was so obsessed w that game 😭
Is it possible you remember a game similar to stardoll? It had a diy feature I believe, you could customize your home, buy clothes but the diy feature is the only part I remember that made it different? Its a longshot but Ive been looking for so long I thought I should ask.
@@doinkeykong Stardoll had diy features after a few years, but only for people who paid vip
I also remember the littlest pet shop online game you could only play if you brought one of their plushies with codes!
@@doinkeykong Not sure if this is what you're thinking of but I remember i-Dressup being very similar to Stardoll and sounding like what you're describing. You could buy clothes from various stores and decorate your home.
I remember that the word shirt was censored on that website, I tried to tell a player I liked her shirt and I couldn't figure out a way around the censor 😭
I feel like this was a fever dream and I'm so glad I'm not alone in remembering this 😭It's so nice hearing others actually talk about
I SCREAMED when I saw the thumbnail because I was recently thinking of this game among others and oh my god the nostalgia!!! Edit: THERE'S A DISCORD COMMUNITY. I literally can't express the joy I'm feeling rn.
Girl, this video is amazing!! Also, you have the perfect voice for narrating long-form video essays on girly media. It's giving me y2k Vanessa Hudgens glam. Your editing is great too!
i never heard of this website in my life, but the thought of an old website that was once popular, then getting completely wiped from the face of the internet with barely any evidence of its existence other than old footage and screenshots or old articles (and that really cool blog) frightens me on an existential level.
love the video!
I remember loving it cause it let me be a really cool goth girl, which surprised me a lot then and even now considering the Barbie brand never really goes fully alternative.
We need an Alt Barbie!
May I suggest to you the Hard Rock Barbie line? My dad got me the 05 and 06 ones. They have tattoos and black and blonde/black hair respectively, and guitars. They’re amazing.
@@kyliemarie5347 OMG I didn't know these existed! My parents weren't really into Barbie dolls so I didn't follow the releases from when I was a kid. They're so beautiful.
SAME, i think maybe Stardoll had some stuff like that too n i loved it
The nostalgia of this game was kinda like whiplash, but I've gotta say I was thrilled when it ended, the toxic hierarchy system was overwhelming and unavoidable. Being friends with VIP girls, only for them to openly laugh at you when they invited you over, before kicking you out of their rooms. And I remember leaving multiple times bc the chat was so restricted you couldn't get to know anyone, it was so canned it was aggravating.
For some reason I thought the game came out earlier, like 2003-2004, so these dates kinda shocked me.
Other girls fashion chat games I'd like you to review are Pixie Hollow and AllGirlArcade. I was there for the end of the Pixie Hollow and the beginning of AllGirlArcade, oh the memories, oh the membership begging I did.
no longer a girl but 1. i was OBSESSED with this site as a kid, thank you So much for covering this!!! and 2. Girl. I was also really into the shins during that time as a kid. im shaking your hand right now.
i wasn’t a barbie girls user, but i was (kind of) conscious as a kid in the 2010s, and i think with large corporate intelligence, mattel sensed the large wave of the “not like other girls” and “tomboy” ideas that infected the 2010s and that i was guilty of, probably the nail in the coffin solidifying their idea that it’s not really worth it for repairs to the site.
Once again the video turned out amazing!! I am so glad the blog archive was so useful and I loved seeing my screenshots being used, especially my Barbie Girls room as the background behind you! Barbie Girls wasn't perfect but I think we all miss it a lot! 😊
i remember being SO FRUSTRATED me and my friend could never find each other even though we were at the same place. now i believe it was because we were plebs :')
There was something so magical about these types of MMO websites. I really miss it.
Ikr ! I miss it so much
YOUR LITTLE DANCEY DANCE AT THE END IS GIVING ME LIFE I LOVE IT 😭😭😭
Barbiegirls was a memory buried REALLY deep, but seeing this video come up in my recommended brought it all rushing back! Thank you for reminding me! I never played much, but I used to love online mmos for kids like this. Club penguin was the one that really hooked me, but barbiegirls, bearville, and so many others were such big parts of my childhood
I remember reading a Total Girl magazine that contained an interview with The Veronicas who had their own custom Barbie Girls MP3 players, and that's what tempted me to sign up. I never got my own MP3, but this video has unlocked so many childhood memories!
I remember this so vividly because my mother couldn’t afford the Barbie girl MP3 but found it at the goodwill and literally BEGGED her to get it for me 😭 best day of my f*cking life!
This is a masterpiece! I had no idea this existed before your essay, but it's fascinating nonetheless since I am interested in virtual worlds and MMOs. You got a wide perspective on the game by being both free to play and later VIP. The excellent, entertaining editing, the witty, informative script and your presentation all make this a really great video! Your Mattel rage segment was funny, and I wasn't ready for the end credits dance! 🤣🤣😂 As much as I love ASMR, that type of video tends to be simple and straight forward. This really showed what you are capable of as a content creator and I'm really impressed.
When the outfit demo launches, maybe you can do a video on it? Either here or on your ASMR channel. I for one would like to see that. If there's enough content there to justify it, and you want to. And please don't ever be discouraged! I hope you make more of these essays, and I hope this one is a hit! It deserves to be!
Excellent work Lilly! I'm proud of you.
That’s a great idea, Daryl. Maybe I could even do both. I’m getting a lot of encouraging feedback already, and I am finding a lot more source material for my next topic than I expected to. Thank you so much, you are a true fan and I appreciate that immensely 💖
This was great! I would love to see you cover the Pixie Hollow MMO and its revival too!
I remember playing the game as a kid. I hated it because I was 1. poor & couldn't afford the cool stuff and 2. got bored of it really quickly. I preferred webkinz because I got a free one from a mardi gras parade.
That little McDonald's Barbie stereo was played to death in my childhood, it never died somehow and I absolutely made my mother seeth with parental rage whenever I'd sneak up on her and play it in her ear.
The first time I ever saw the MP3 players in stores they were marked down for like $5 😂 but I used that MP3 player for years until it completely broke.
As an absolute sucker for 2000's media, this was a real treat! Thank you!
Perhaps I'm seeing these 2000s games with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but there's something about the art style and overall vibe that made them captivating, and I just don't feel that mystique anymore with newer games that are allegedly far more predatory in the way they make profit *looking at Roblox*. This was a nice breakdown and I'm glad you put into words how I've always felt about these girly y2k games.
I played this because my mom worked for Mattel at the time. Otherwise it was expensive and I probably wouldn’t have known about it. She didn’t buy me the mp3 player. I don’t recall anything being at Walmart for this game. Seriously seems like a fever dream, definitely forgot about it until now! It was fun to play, but I kept forgetting my login. I played in 2007-2008, later I remembered it to find it gone. My go to computer game was Webkinz
you unlocked so many of my old, *old* memories with this video omg
i remember dressing my doll up, the trash loading times and practically BEGGING my mom to buy me VIP, but she (wisely) never accepted ahah... great video!
I was a big tomboy as a kid and was obsessed with these kind of virtual worlds. I’ve never even heard of this one! I think that says a lot about the alienation of a lot of potential players.
I used to play this as a kid- thank you for reminding me of its existence! Also Wow i can’t believe this is your first video. So well spoken and wonderfully organized! ❤
What's funny is I remember as a kid always seeing ads for Barbiegirls on the main Barbie website but I never bothered playing it, funnily enough, because the load times were way too bad for me as a little kid who had a really bad attention span on websites.
Even though I never played it, this was such an incredibly well made video! I'd love to hear you talk about other obscure MMO games online like the Nickelodeon one or even Beanie Babies 2.0! :D
YASSSS omg do u mean nicktropolis??? that was my whole life encapsulated into a website 😭😭😭
@@forafinalgirl Yas that one!!!
chat blockers like that are always so funny because like. what pre-teen knows the inappropriate meaning of 'come'?, i would've just been incredibly confused why i couldn't use a regular word and it would probably cause me to find out the 'adult' meaning purely out of curiosity as to why I couldn't use it
Would love to see a video of you speaking about Stardoll ✨
i literally have a stardoll video planned HOWEVER my relationship to stardoll is exclusively as a site that directly or indirectly killed the sites that i love the most so it’s not going to be exactly…. loving
@@lispeaks I'm excited nonetheless!! You're so informative and the fact this was your first video blows my mind !!
@@lispeaks It's alright. I'm sure you'll be able to talk about it in a fair, unbiased way despite your relationship towards the site.
man i remember my sister n i loving barbiegirls and then it got replaced by frickin STARGIRL.... i think you should obliterate that site. love and light
Watching this video again after your more recent PETA games video is giving me "Early Installment Weirdness" vibes. You're really evolved technology wise!
oh god I was OBSESSED with this, my mom refused to give me a more expensive MP3 just cause it was Barbie so I spent my days dreaming of a VIP subscription (which she was also against)
OH MY GOD I SAW THE THUMBNAIL AND I SWEAR I'VE NEVER CLICKED ON A VIDEO FASTER. when i was a kid my then-bff had one of the mp3 players. i remembered this recently and i've been haunted by the memory because i didn't think i would ever see it again!! i didn't remember what purpose it served at all, i just had a hazy idea of what it looked like so i couldn't even search for it on the internet. this feels like a solved mystery to me 😭💗
your channel is truly a blessing ✨
Wonderful job with the video! I’ve been craving a Barbiegirls retrospective and never clicked so fast. Your depth of research and attention to detail is noted
It's not much, but I have recently discovered your content and I am obsessed. You're so eloquent and articulate, and truthfully I really appreciate your hard work on content like this. Thank you so much.
I can definitely see how hard you worked on this research, this video is amazing! I never got to play on barbiegirls as a kid because I thought it was for "grown kids only" (I don't know where I got that from, I can't remember if my parents used to tell me this sort of stuff to keep me away from online spaces). I'm really excited for the rewritten project, I hope it goes well. ;_;
the aesthetic and design did seem more mature since they were competing with bratz which when i was young was described as the more mature version of barbie because of their designs and more teen based fashion
This game has been living in my head rent-free for over a decade now and im so glad someone finally vide about it! I used to play so many social games that maybe I should make video essays too because a lot are lost info and forgotten history
edit: no way! u did one on girlsense too !!
You're new but have completed captions? Legend behaviour! And hey, I can't wait to see you get more comfortable on the screen, because the content is great and you seem really nice and calm!
I think it's so cool that most of the people archiving this stuff were kids.... i love thinking of little virtual world obsessed kids on the family computer preserving history 😭
....... also that eyebrow ring is extremely cute 😍
My first experience with this game was making my avatar resemble how I looked at that time, then going out in public and another user called me a nerd :(
i absolutely adore that you included subtitles on this video despite it being long!! it means a lot to me and i'm sure to many others
I LOVED this game! Even if I was a free peasant who couldn’t buy anything 😜😜
I remember taking the Fashionista quiz multiple times until I got every necklace.
✨✨
Watching this while at work I'm so excited!!!
Wait isn’t encouraging kids to ask parents as a marketing technique actually illegal? Can’t remember if i read it in GDPR or ICC communication code, but advertising to children is a slippery slope, especially if europe is involved.
(That being said, rules like that probably didn’t exist then)
Perhaps not? The predatory practice of FOMO is still an on-going practice in most mobile games.
Oh my god, I genuinely thought nobody was going to talk about this, this was one of my favourite games as a kid!
Also, I'm subscribing! You're an amazing creator, and I have no idea how you manage to be a new creator! You obviously have done loads of research and really know your way around this kind of thing, I'm really excited for this to become a successful channel!
i'm only a few minutes in and i'm already loving this your commentary style and voice is so cute, i'll definitely check out the rest of your stuff afterwards :D
You've just unlocked the kind of nostalgia I've thought I'd never feel, lol.
I remember accidentally stumbling upon this site, most likely bcs it was promoted on the main Barbie page, and LOVING IT. I have so many of the 'typical' memories of being a small, non-native English speaking child; Playing such sites while not understanding the language and navigating them blind, frequent chat misunderstandings but both parties trying their best to find a way to communicate, the loading times being even longer cuz Eastern European countries had slower net, not being able to upgrade due to lack of products being sold in your area/buy the online currency cuz dollars were too expensive to exchange your real life currency into and being really bummed out about it. THE JEALOUSY, oh MAN. "How come the kids in the US get to enjoy it to the fullest and not me in my own, non western country??"
...But also the utter fascination and awe at how cool everything looks and feels! Very few sites like these existed in the digital landscape for Slavic internet users at the time, so being able to enter the English ones always added to the "cool" factor. There was so much variety! Ended up daydreaming a lot about being from the US and being able to get all the things I wanted in BG, really believing it would be that simple...
And MAN what a perfect time capsule of mid-2000's graphic design+trends BG is! Even though it was so aggressively "GIRL", it helped spark my interest in fashion/design and start appreciating feminine things in general. I was a huge tomboy and an NLOG ("Not like other girls") growing up and these sites were a guilty pleasure. Now that I'm an adult, I can appreciate them to the fullest while acknowledging their (many) faults.
It's really nice seeing people talk about these places, not letting them become forgotten. They really were special despite their imperfections...
i met you today and just kept clicking on random videos from you that appeared on the side of the screen
i really thought you've been on youtube for maybe 4 years, you seem so experienced, i'm in love with your channel
Oh I cannot WAIT for this channel to blow up. Defunct game video essay fans rise up 💪🏻✨
Those loading times were indeed horrible lol. I remember having to go to the library to play this game since they had better internet than our house did (we still had dial-up at the time which I'm sure also didn't help), but even then the site was still terribly slow, haha.
OKAY BIG FAN HERE AND THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE VIDEO OF ALL UA-cam! Plus missing this game so much, I'm actually a boy who played it when I was a kid and after all this time still remember and want to play it again like a lot. BTW LOVE THE ENDING LIKE "STAY AWAY OF OUR (fans) PATH MATTEL!" I remember being sooo mad after the shutdown. So much hope now and wishing luck to the team behind BGR Project!
oh my!! I just got your video recommended and I got flodded with nostalgia. I used to play this game so much in it's early days but I could never remember enough about it to really look back at it. So your video finally brought this back to me. Seeing those avatars, the room, the chat options, the stores again is so wild! Thank you so much for making this video and giving back a name and face to such a big part of a short time in my childhood!
I HAD THAT MCDONALDS TOY! God that unlocked a LOT of Nostalgia!
Oh! And I remember this not-very-popular site where you buy an animal stuffie, and along with it, you are "buying a star". By registering your toy, you'd be assigned a random star in the sky.
I will say, the fact that the site attempted to track that particular star (supposedly), to help you know when you might be able to see "your" star in your area.
My memories of this site are pretty vague, and I don't remember what the name of the thing was. I think the reason that I don't have many memories of it was that the site? Was freaking Boring!!! There were a few mini games, and you could track the star. Maybe you could feed your animal?
But as far as I remember, there were no lobbies or anything. If there were, they weren't particularly great. And Webkinz and Neopets probably had much better games at the time anyway.
I had a stuffed white owl that was quite soft (I named it "Snowy"), and a brown monkey (don't remember what I named him) who had more of a... plasticy hair fur? The monkey was Not Comfortable to Hug!
I'd say the site was trying to be like Webkinz, but man, it just wasn't that fun 🤷. They definitely went defunct before Webkinz did.
Tbh Webkinz should revamp itself and start selling again. I think they'd be able to get a decent audience of nostalgic adults and a new wave of kids.
If I figure out the name of the brand and site, I'll let you know!
I'm super late, but there's a 99% chance you're talking about the game/toy Shining Stars.
This is amazing. I was half convinced that my memory of that particular slightly angular-headed incarnation of Barbie was just a fevered dream in between the My Scene and Bratz phases in my teenage years... until I came across this video. Thank you for this amazing video essay! Also, kudos to the amazing quality in production, research, and style!
You just unlocked a memory of mine. I played this game but the memories I have are quite faint. I only recognized the style of the characters haha
lmao baby barbie lesbians!!! that was me!!! the dream homosocial multiplayer game lol. still, i didn't play for long bc of the paywall, it looked so promising i still find myself thinking about the game and wanting to customize my avatar. thanks for the video! it's so hard to find footage and analysis surrounding barbiegirls!
1. loving the word “homosocial”
2. the demo is delayed again 😭
@@lispeaks yeah i found out 💔 but i managed to join the discord and follow their ig ! it's such a great project !!! i'm sure it'll be great 😁❤ and yes homosocial is an amazing word it changed my life lol
I really would have loved the queer implications of BarbieGirls to be explored in further detail. I mean, I know it was a 2000s game created by likely adult men and marketed to cis-hetero tween girls, but cmon folks, think about it for a second: a world consisting of only girls with NO boys allowed. Girls befriending girls, hanging out with girls and developing relationships with girls. Like that has to be the gayest thing ever hahahaha. It would have been so interesting to explore what it was like to be a young queer girl playing a game that's trying soooo hard to impose heteronormative ideals but is still dripping with lesbian subtext
Just found your channel and this video was an amazing nostalgia trip, but the Katamari Damacy music made me immediately hit the subscribe button:)
I had one of the mp3 players! I remember going on the website too. The song was like bangin though.
Also, I love how this was during the peak of scene girls era, so there was many scene girl inspired looks, especially the hair styles.
0:03 I thought I was a watching a regular upload. Surprised to know this was the first video lol
Incredible delivery and pacing, really enjoyed this video even though I have never played this game! Just saying the doll you showed when mentioning the Fashionistas line isn't from 2009 and was released a lot more recently, the current Barbie Fashionistas are a lot different to the ones from the 2000s
that’s fair! i admit that my knowledge of virtual worlds is much stronger than my knowledge of dolls lol
@@lispeaks I subscribed! Can't wait to see what you'll make next, this is an amazing first video!
I had one of these! Absolutely loved it and the website. Took the mp3 player with me everywhere and then lost it. I still haven't found it. That song on it still lives rent free in my head. Ever so often I find my self humming it.
I made an account on there in 2008, with a fake email and without my mums permission and I felt so guilty about for months 😂
Barbie would be so mad at you
I. Completely. Forgot. This existed. Until i saw the thumbnail for this. I WAS OBSESSED WITH THIS!! I even had that funky little mp3 player that i almost immediately lost! Agghhh i have to binge your entire channel now for lost memories.
I remember having like, a redheaded mp3 player? And my only memory of actually having it in my hands is of me fumbling around with it, pulling back the edges of the hair, and hearing that plastic _snack!_ as it snaps back into place. And then listening to that Barbie theme on REPEAT. I cant believe i forgot that tune existed because when i say repeat, i mean _REPEAT._
it's finals week for me and i'm super stressed out, but your videos are so soothing to me. it seems like we played a lot of the same games as kids for the same reasons! i'm really looking forward to checking out the rest of your videos
i like your voice, you sound like a gossipy victorian baker telling me about the murderer you saw tossing a basket of limbs into the harbor a night ago. its comforting and nice.
in subscribing to you, i found out that you have an asmr channel. i think that is a smart business decision. your voice is pretty.
Wow what a blast from the past. That was my favorite website hands down as a kid. I believe I started playing right when the beta came out. Even without VIP I remember having a good time. Eventually I got my pink Barbie MP3 player (which gave me VIP) and it was my pride and joy. I really miss those days…
You just unlocked a totally hidden memory for me. I REMEMBER THE MP3 PLAYER!!! mine only had 2 songs which was "Our Song" by Taylot Swift and another song I can't remember LMFAO but I loved that mp3 player and I loved Barbie Girls even though I didn't play it as much!