How it feels to be an adult AJ player with friends who play other games and having to justify liking a game with bad stuff like this

Something I've been meaning to post to this community but I changed my mind about it, but seeing the current situation I think now's the perfect time to bring this up again. Please be prepared for a very long post.

I love Animal Jam but it's been very hard to make adult friends who also love this game as much as I do. As a general gamer I have a lot of gaming friends but they don't really want to play this one lol. Understandable yeah, this game is definitely like a niche thing, and people who enjoy stuff like Half-Life aren't really gonna be into this lol. I've tried joining discord servers for Animal Jam and kind of found that a lot of players I don't really vibe with? Like they talk kinda rude and are pretty toxic idk maybe I'm not looking in the right place.

I have a hyperfixation on Animal Jam. as a furry and someone who loves making avatars and decorating houses, there is literally no other game like this currently. None of them really have the depth of the character customization as this one does, let alone has many playable animal species. The fact that you can color a wide variety of animals in any color and even their eyes and put patterns like hearts or stars on them is a lot. Like there's games that let you play as animals but they don't really give you that much in customization. Adding onto the pets, dens, and the fact that you can make in-game art and music, there really is no other game that has let me done all of this.

Despite all this though recently it's been very hard for me to justify playing this game to my friends. Of course stuff happens and especially recently there's been some stuff I've not been happy with so I tell my closest friend about it. Don't get me wrong I also tell him about how much I love this game and how much money I spend on it, but he thinks I shouldn't be spending so much money on this game and that it's a waste and maybe I should find a new game. It angers him that I'm spending so much money on this game. November was hard on my wallet because they released both velociraptor eggs and the party potions at the same time, but I love the game so much it doesn't really give me much of a second to think if I should really buy it or not.

So my question to adult players is how much do you believe a player can spend on this game before it becomes too much? I've spent...quite a lot of money on the game at this point and my friends, these are my gamer friends let me remind you, they tell me that it's too much for a game. They, as well as I, are both aware that this game really tends to ask for money, especially in recent. It makes me think maybe playing this game...is not really healthy. It's hard to think about quitting but I can't justify WIldwork's bad business practices.