Widely sought-after animals like Raymond, Judy, and Ankha are great and all, but some Animal Crossing: New Horizons players want to remind one another that there literally hundreds of villagers in the game that were all created equal in the developers' eyes. For many, what was supposed to be a peaceful and egalitarian island experience has turned into an exhaustive process of searching and culling to collect the online community's collective favorite villagers, and that's probably not what Nintendo intended.
Many players aren't aware because there's no in-game list of villagers and their comings and goings to and from an island is inherently slow-paced to keep things fresh for players for years, but there are just shy of 400 villagers that can be convinced to move to players' islands. Another reason that they may not know (or simply not care) about that figure is a bizarre metagame that has developed within the most visible sectors of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons online fanbase on popular sites like Twitter and Reddit, in which some villagers are widely hated and others venerated just short of worship. That latter group's perceived sense of worth has been inflated to extreme degrees by things like tier lists and player-driven marketplace Nookazon, where the most popular villagers sell for millions of bells a pop.
Finally highlighting the mostly harmless but still playstyle-limiting obsession with a tiny subset of villagers was Twitter's Virum, who stated, "Animal Crossing New Horizons [sic] has almost 400 different villagers but [sic] AC Twitter would make you believe there are only about 30." The tweet quickly went viral, receiving over 100,000 likes and an impassioned outpour of agreement from players who feel vindicated at last about their less popular villagers. Reposted on Reddit by user TheMisanthropicGeek with a community that may need to hear Virum's simple fact most, the tweet got further community support and more than 50,000 upvotes the following day.
As there's no truly wrong playstyle in Animal Crossing: New Horizons - whether it be shameless time-traveling or comparatively primitive island living by those who can barely scrape together time to play - that means that tireless elimination and rolls for the internet's selection of "desirable" villagers is valid, as well. That said, social media platforms are notoriously places where individual opinions go to die and be supplanted by those held by those belonging to people with greater followings and influence, and some players probably feel compelled to play the game the "right" way by chasing fashionable villagers even at the cost of fun. While the Animal Crossing: New Horizons community is far and away one of the most accepting and least toxic in all of gaming, it does seem like a waste of dozens upon dozens of completely unique character models to disregard most of them over some unwritten rule.
Again, the beauty of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is that there are only right ways to play, so long as it doesn't have a directly negative effect on other players' time with the peaceful vacation sim. That said, anyone moved by their fellow players' words should let the next animal that doesn't top an arbitrary tier list stay on their island - who know, maybe they'll find them less repulsive and more relatable than they would expect.
Source: Virum, TheMisantrhopicGeek via Reddit
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