Table of Contents:

1. What is Rule 5?
2. What is DARVO, sealioning, dogwhistles?
3. Why don’t you just block them? / What is this about blocking?

What is Rule 5?

Rule 5 is an outdated rule from the official Neopets rules page¹. In 2022, TNT put out a statement in the Neopian Times editorial² revising the rule to allow LGBTQ content, but because the official rules page has not been changed despite years of asing for TNT to update them. In 2025, after intense public pushback, TNT copy pasted this same response in their “apology” for biased moderation³ and reiterated that Rule 5 is not enforced and the current ruling allows LGBTQ discussion.⁴

Nevertheless, the fact this ruling is not reflected by the most accessable rules page allows trolls to falsely accuse LGBTQ/Trans discussion as not site appropriate. The failure of TNT to update this ruleset for over 3 years is unacceptable, even after they’ve promised to update it many times before.

What is DARVO, sealioning, dogwhistles?

All of these things are examples of tactics the transphobic trolls use to obfuscate their true intentions. To be specific…

• DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender This is a common strategy of abusers and trolls to maniuplate the narrative of the situation and posit themselves as victims of uncouth harassment and that the victims are the REAL bullies. With how the neoboards work, only having a history going back 8 pages and moderators simply deleting offending messages en-masse instead of actual punishment, this is an incredibly effective tactic.⁵

• Sealioning:⁶ To relentlessly harass people with requests for evidence or proof of something is happening, often going into inane questions not unlike a 5 year old asking “Why?” at everything. To deny their request is thus the most grevious offense: not entertaining their bad faith arguments and their obvious attempts to play dumb. Often they will surmise their behavior as just a ‘debate’, but this is not true, they just want to badger you incessantly until you go away.

• Dogwhistles:⁷ This is a tactic of bigots in which they use coded language that looks innoccuous on the surface, but the ingroup knows it means something else. There are plenty of dog whistles out there and you might not recognize them as such– a good dog whistle has plausible deniability, especially on its own, but with a pattern of behavior or reckless usage it becomes obvious that what they are saying is not what they mean.

  Here is list of TERF dog whistles and terminology, though the ones used on the neoboards may be more subtle than this. Due to JK Rowling’s overt transmisogyny and financial lobbying to inact violent transphobic laws in the UK, talking about how much you love Harry Potter or JK Rowling is often seen as a dog whistle when combined with other behavior or antagonism towards trans people.

Why don’t you just block them? / What is this about blocking?

Fun fact: The block function on Neopets is functionally useless. Well, almost useless, as it only prevents people from 1. friend requesting you, 2. neomailing you, and 3. sending you gifts. Notice that none of these things impact the neoboards! Or so we thought. According to trolls, and moderation action since then, interacting with a user who has you blocked can result in diciplinary action towards you.

For that you may ask: how do you know who has you blocked? :^) you don’t. The only, and ONLY way you can determined if you are blocked is if you try to send them a neomail: the neomail page will then tell you if you are able to send them a neomail.

This rule, by the way, was never enforced until trolls started complaining about trans people “harassing” them. Isn’t moderation bias grand?