As Generation Z gets older, things from our childhoods start to become nostalgic. However, unlike some of the other generations, a lot of nostalgia for Gen Z exists on an entirely new medium: the internet and mobile devices. Online spaces like Club Penguin or Wizard101 are relics of the past and apps you had on your iPod Touch probably don’t exist anymore. There is a rich trove of defunct apps and games from the late 2000s and 2010s, yet no one talks about them. No one except for today’s Youtuber: Li Speaks.
Born on the edge of being a millenial and a part of Gen Z, Speaks, who uses any pronouns, spent a lot of their time on the internet as a child and has a deep knowledge of flash games that spanned the early to late 2000s. Their coverage of flash games centers mostly on those targeted towards female audiences, like the websites GirlsSense and GirlGoGames. Speaks has gone into specifics with GirlsGoGames with their “Shopaholic” series, their three mascots and the genre of “kissing and flirting games” in general. Not all of their flash coverage is gendered, as they discuss large children’s websites like Club Penguin or Neopets and just flash games in general, such as the bizarre catalog of PETA parody games.
Out of all of Speaks’ videography, a personal favorite is “The Downfall of Disney’s Virtual Worlds (PART ONE) Toontown, Club Penguin, and Pixie Hollow.” I was a frequent Club Penguin and Pixie Hollow user — with Pixie Hollow being where I got my first (and only) boyfriend — and I loved reminiscing about the two sites through Speaks’ video. They mostly show recorded gameplay footage, talking about gameplay mechanisms and details over the footage. It’s exciting to learn more about these websites that were critical to my childhood and Speaks isn’t afraid to talk about the more insidious components of the sites. Whether it’s weird parent-baby roleplaying done on Club Penguin via “pookies” or the endless stream of microtransactions and ensuing classist behaviors that the Pixie Hollow series fostered, the sites of my youth were not as wholesome as I remembered them to be.
Speaks also has plenty of videos that deviate from the flash coverage. One video categorizes Reddit Ragebait and is a thoroughly researched and entertaining watch. They’ve covered television shows, their own childhood fears and their most recent upload is about the Style Savvy DS series.
Speaks is very good at the craft of creating videos. They maintain a calm voice, wear an outfit that aesthetically complements the video’s topic, are a skilled editor who makes visually engaging choices and they write scripts that balance personal anecdotes with factual information. Speaks also always credits the small artists behind games that might otherwise go unmentioned, something that I really appreciate. They are incredibly personable and come across as an authentic voice, rather than someone just phoning it in. It is so easy to look at these pink, girly games and dismiss them, but Speaks never condescends to the content they discuss; they approach it with the utmost respect for the medium of “girly” games. Their passion for old media is clear in all their content and in the depth of research they put into games from the 2000s.
As someone who was always playing online games as a child, their content speaks to me on a personal level. Hearing Speaks talk about very specific topics takes me back to being a kid in my school’s computer lab on clunky desktop Windows software, playing with my friends and all the joy that came with it. This is a feeling I am not quite used to: a longing for the “good old days.” The COVID-19 pandemic came along and messed with everyone’s sense of time, making me detached from the fact that I am, in fact, two decades (and some change) old. Speaks’ content is exactly what I need to remind myself that while my childhood is behind me and that the technology we used when I was younger is so vastly different than what is used today, there are still plenty of people who remember and cherish the things that we used to love.
