Bring Your Tamagotchis Up Gay: The Original Virtual Pets as Queer Digital Artifacts

Abstract

How does a digital artifact come to be regarded as queer? Is it possible to make these artifacts queerer? In this article, I explore these questions in connection to one specific case study: the Tamagotchi. Launching the virtual pet craze of the 1990s, the Tamagotchi was created with conservative values in mind. Yet, like one of Donna Haraway’s cyborgs, the device rebelled. Not only does its ambiguous and arbitrary expressions of gender push against a more traditional framework, the Tamagotchi has also invited a wide array of queer play. Through each successive model released by the toy company Bandai, users have questioned and subverted binary constructions of sex, gender, identity, and desire.

While devoted fans have seemingly always been aware of the queer dynamics at play in the Tamagotchi, a wave of recent nostalgia has reunited many Millennials with the virtual pets of their past. In similarly returning to these devices (both to the original model released globally in 1997 as well as to their newer offspring), I have constructed an in-depth analysis of the modes, practices, and processes by which the Tamagotchi operates—and engages users—through queer dynamics.