Neopets

There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens

A site where children kept virtual animals and, to decorate their pages and shops, learned markup, trading, economics and guild politics. For a very large cohort it was the first place they wrote code.