Your Gaia IRL Superpower

[Hassli]

Hey friends!

We've all been here too long and for some like major growing pain times of our lives. We must have picked up soemthign useful from our time on this website. I'm not talkign about item hoarding or the encyclopedic knowledge of certain NPCs *cough* Diedrich *cough*. I mean like skills or traits or like habits that somehow followed you from Gaia to the real world.

For me, I am an ok graphic designer and make some social media posts for work that started in making banners for D-Party events. I can also organize teams from my years of planning Gaia events. I have often thought how convenient it would have been if I could have included the user-events I have had a part in on Gaia in my resume.

So what about you guys?

Did running an art shop give you business know how?
Did roleplayig make you a decent writer?
Did arguing in the GD make you an excellent debater?
Or maybe your typing speed is impressive! IDK!
Do you have an impressive stock portfolio because of practicing buying low and selling high in the marketplace?

Your super power might be serious or silly.

So what Gaia-grown ability are you carrying around in real life?

[Addium]

I was just reminiscing about this with a few old friends I hung out in Towns 1 with.

From way back in the Towns 1 days when Flash still ruled the site,
I used to create LGBTQ+ hangout topics.
So the community had a place to chill, chat, and make friends with one another.

Every now and then, the peace would get interrupted by cyberers, homophobes, or trolls.
I wasn’t a moderator, but I became something like a community steward.
(Flagging down mods when things got ugly and helping keep the space welcoming, etc.)

Fast forward years later, people would come back and tell me they used to feel safe in those hangouts.
And they thanked me for making them. And that always stuck with me.
When Flash finally died and Towns 1 faded into memory, I didn’t stop.

In 2018, I helped organize the very first user-made Gaia Pride Parade in zOMG. (You were included, too!)
I have been hosting it ever since and continue to look forward to it every year.
Those early Gaia days taught me how to build safe, inclusive communities from the ground up.

Today, I carry that lesson into my career as a teacher and an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.
My classroom isn’t just a place to learn and be creative. (I am an art teacher.)
It’s also safe space where every student feels respected and included.
I don’t hesitate to step in when bullies target my students, even outside the classroom.
Especially now that I actually have the authority (and the responsibility).

Gaia gave me the foundation, but real life gave me the platform.

[Hassli]

Addium

I was just reminiscing about this with a few old friends I hung out in Towns 1 with.

From way back in the Towns 1 days when Flash still ruled the site,
I used to create LGBTQ+ hangout topics.
So the community had a place to chill, chat, and make friends with one another.

Every now and then, the peace would get interrupted by cyberers, homophobes, or trolls.
I wasn’t a moderator, but I became something like a community steward.
(Flagging down mods when things got ugly and helping keep the space welcoming, etc.)

Fast forward years later, people would come back and tell me they used to feel safe in those hangouts.
And they thanked me for making them. And that always stuck with me.
When Flash finally died and Towns 1 faded into memory, I didn’t stop.

In 2018, I helped organize the very first user-made Gaia Pride Parade in zOMG. (You were included, too!)
I have been hosting it ever since and continue to look forward to it every year.
Those early Gaia days taught me how to build safe, inclusive communities from the ground up.

Today, I carry that lesson into my career as a teacher and an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.
My classroom isn’t just a place to learn and be creative. (I am an art teacher.)
It’s also safe space where every student feels respected and included.
I don’t hesitate to step in when bullies target my students, even outside the classroom.
Especially now that I actually have the authority (and the responsibility).

Gaia gave me the foundation, but real life gave me the platform.

warm fuzzies here! I am so glad for your students!

[oucyan]

I don't think Gaia really gave me major superpowers irl. At least none that I now capitalize on as an adult, But fiddling with the old items and getting them to layer how I want, color coordination and theming, has given me a good eye for detail. Though tbh, I've always had a good eye for detail, what with being borderline OCD due to Asperger's syndrome.

And to be fair, there are a lot better avatar designers on this site than me. But hey, Take one look at my avatar, and tell me I didn't do a good job. Not a single repeating item, and no arm or leg mods (man I miss when items didn't have arm and leg mods. made it a lot more fun to design avatars. now if you want to change the legs, you have to change everything from the waist down. it really removes a lot of the creativity designing old avatars had. Though in exchange you do get some nice, dynamic poses. Still, I'd like if more of the RIG items we're bombarded with had some classic item categories, like shoes, socks, pants, sleeves etc that weren't attached to an arm or leg mod)

Sorry it turned into a rant at there. lol. IRL, I don't really get too into fashion, since I just like to wear what's comfortable, but I have on occasion helped my female friends coordinate their outfits, and I've helped family members coordinate their living spaces when they were redoing them. I have to say, I have Gaia to thank for the skills I have in color balancing.

[FluidityFlux]

↪ i got on gaia at a fairly young age for only one reason: the world building. i would spend hours in jigsaw and spent almost all of my allowance on gaia cash so i could decorate my avatar in stunning pixel art. the artists of gaia have fully inspired almost everything i do today artistically. i had no one in my life encouraging my artistic ability and gaia was doing what me and every other middle schooler neurodivergent does, make creatures and characters, and i was so inspired and awed by it. gaia's avatars and items created my fascination and appreciation for pixel art.
while not something i would consider a "superpower" i credit gaia a lot for inspiring creation and imagination in me during a really formative period of my life. gaia doesn't have evolving items or really leans much into the lore anymore, and i wish they did because it's truly something special, but it was so fun being a part of such a creative crowd and watching literal evolution of an artist's passion project.

i have to also mention Towns 1 bc Addium did and i miss her everyday. if my avatar indicates anything, i used to roam Towns 1 with "I Am" items on almost every night, just piddling around shaking trees and catching bugs and picking up litter. i was super isolated growing up and my social skills were incredibly poor, so it was hard to just,,, connect with people, but Towns made it SO easy. people will never not love a Little Guy scurrying around (after all, creatures are why i joined) so a lot of social interactions with really amazing people would find me. this is a huge reason why i can't just get behind avi chat. once i get talking, im pretty charismatic, but my anxiety and neurodivergence make initiating hard. i miss this casual socialization an awful lot, but it helped me learn how to navigate communication online pretty early on to use it to build real connections.

gaia isn't perfect, but it's been inspiring me since i joined over 15 years ago. i've recently been reviving a lot of my characters from my "early gaia era" and it's been a nice escape from the horrors of today's internet riddled with souless AI and faceless bots.

[Baja]

Joining Gaia, for me, was an escape from the things I was dealing with back when I was a teen.
I feel as though I've done quite a lot on this site. From my time as a Moderator to having an 8 year long quest thread. Though, honestly, I feel as though my only true accomplishment was the work I did petitioning and sending countless messages to Gaia staff to create a report button for the pm system, back before there was one. I do miss RPing with people, and I do feel as though that did help my writing style. Also, helping me to be more descriptive and to try to not simply use the same words over and over for everything.

[Ovi]

I don't know if I picked up any new skills from Gaia Online. I discovered online forums and websites/games with trading and market mechanics well before this website. I never made art for people, or went to any IRL Gaia Online functions. My experience on Gaia has been mostly a solo one, except for in the 2000's when I had a couple of online friends who visited.

I will say that Gaia excelled at a few things.

They were pretty much leaders in this area of avatar customization and clothing and accessory design, and knowing how to create all of these equipment slots that can generally work together well for every outfit combination. So as Oucyan said, it did help me with improving my own concept of what items go together well and what looks too busy.

While the site didn't have the first online economy, they certainly had one of the most noteworthy ones, and one of the first I was following regularly. Gaia only put prices on shop items, so they left it up to the community to determine the value of floating box drops and monthly envelopes/items. It was interesting watching the prices of beloved items skyrocket, while unpopular ones remained reasonable. I guess that gave me a feel for supply and demand, and online markets like eBay.

Gaia was also, at least in those earlier years (I can't vouch for it as much now) on the ball with seasonal events for its users to enjoy here on the site. There wasn't much like that before, outside of MMOs. And a lot of them were fun and memorable, and worked with the "clicking" aspect of the site. The running competition between all of the shop NPCs, the lab event where people turned into zombies, Johnny K. Gambino and the Von Helson sisters reaching out to Gaia for support, and then the fun and festive things like Robo Easter Bunny and Pumpkin Jack during Halloween. There was always something to look forward to, and I think it showed me what makes something like this engaging for its audience.

Then there was that whole development of the monthly envelope, and its smart implementation as a monthly "subscription" or "investment" of sorts for the community. Gaia was making a little money, and its citizens were choosing whether to gamble their money on the latest envelope, which turned into a letter the following month once its contents were unveiled. Adding to the concept was this idea of including 2 different items you could choose between in the letter each month, and then later on making it so that each item might be equippable to different equipment slots to provide something like a full set of armor. From then on, you might decide to buy multiples of new envelopes before the next month, so that you have enough to equip all of them if you like the item enough, and still have plenty to sell for profit later on down the road. This wasn't the start of FOMO, but it really pushed the idea and I would wager it was successful in that approach.

I would say that a lot of these same ideas Gaia Online was perfecting and implementing back in 2003, are more commonplace now in modern times than ever before. And while Gaia might not have pioneered all of them, their skill at making everything work here the way it does is impressive. I think Gaia helped prepare me for this whole concept of customizable avatars with unique equipment you can buy and equip to them, this sort of large-scale online economy that exists within a lot of things, the idea of regular annual events and weekly or daily features on a website, and of course the monthly subscription/purchase for rare and exclusive content.

[Urd Tanzanite]

My stuff is fairly mundane. I really did learn how to type (faster) while interacting with people in the forums--I got really fast when I got into real-time RP. Huh, I just realized that may be where I got some of my improv skills from--still useful as I DM bi-weekly D&D sessions. And I can't forget basic coding.

I remember one summer getting a job creating pages for a small company's WordPress website. Formatting the text and embedding photos were things I had learned on Gaia's forums. One of my first WFH jobs.

[Ouja Akuma]

Gaia absolutely gave me more experience as an artist and writer, but it's also helped me socialize. Gaia has been a staple in my life since 06 and I'm riding it until either this site dies or me lol.

I still have an art shop, I even operate a charity that's been live since 2020 (mini breaks here and there). I think that's my super power....just being here.

[Hassli]

Oh nice! This thread got first paged!

Keep sharing these awesome super power friends! You’re all very cool!

[Yeata Zi]

The resume comment is so real. Honestly so is typing speed. Gaia fully is the reason I am a typing demon.

[sleepieststardust]

I now price check everything religiously both online and in store before making a purchase
I've also sort of modified the 10 day rule and organized everything that I want into a list and constantly remind myself that I'm questing for whatever is currently at the top of that list so I save my money

[gum disease]

It got me more interested in pixel art; I used to sell pixels on this account and a dedicated art mule. I actually really miss it, so I might pick that back up again when I have more free time.

I've established really good friendships with amazing people because of this place, too. This was particularly true when I became a mod; the team is really tight-knit and supportive. I'm training to be a physiotherapist (physical therapist for people in NA), and teamwork is a really important aspect of working in a healthcare setting because you're part of a multi-disciplinary team. I think Gaia helped me develop the skills to be able to work effectively in teams with people from all walks of life and with varying levels of experience.

I joined when I was like 13, so I've grown up on this site. I've seen a lot, and it's helped me become a lot more internet savvy in general, particularly regarding safety and being mindful about what you disclose online.

[catswort2]

playing market games made me kind of good at selling stuff lol

[Dream GhoulDream Ghoul]

I feel like I can type pretty fast, but I still fall on old habits of how we would type in towns and such. I finally make nice avatars, but it's still a pain in the butt to get all the things I need.