Used to used to play Animal Jam. It is not as wonderful as I had dreamed of as a child.
I played this game since the BETA- swapped accounts about a year before my initial banning. As a little kid, I genuinely liked it, but things began to change quickly after 2011.
I could care less about the economy. You know, whatever. Spiked Collars are extremely common and pretty much worthless, but so is the dollar- it's what we determine the object to be worth that gives it it's value. The biggest problem that emerged, however, was the popular community that sparked roots in early 2012. Animal Jam 'YouTubers' ruined the modern game.
Older players may remember the numerous 'hackings' that occurred on the Animal Jam admin website? No, they weren't hacked- players Aparri and either Varallix or Zarfy (don't remember, it was ages ago) guessed a couple passwords and guessed right. Pretty sure it was admin/admin or sfsadmin/sfsadmin. In any case, they got some unreleased items and became
extremely popular, falling among the ranks of a few "YouTubers". People forgot soon after. This, however, is the birth of an extremely corrupted system that the Animal Jam staff correlated.
Timeskip- 2016. At this point, a few Animal Jam YouTubers have over 100,000 subscribers. This is a HUGE deal for Animal Jam's marketing team. Aparri can make as many terrible clickbait videos as he'd like, because they get views- and views = publicity = free advertising for Animal Jam. Not only this, but Aparri's upload schedule is EXTREMELY favorable to YT's current alg and pretty much creates a perfect breeding ground for both AdSense revenue and free adverting for WildWorks. They decide to test the waters by creating a new popup when you create an account-
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Where did you hear about Animal Jam?
[] A friend
[] A google search
[]
An internet video[] Other ()
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Big success. Animal Jam cashes in. They award 'videographer' plaques to the highest earners (Snowyclaw, WisteriaMoon, Aparri, Bepper, etc) and invite them all to VidCon for that extra publicity.
So, you may think. What's the big deal?
Quite a lot.
These players are still normal players- on the same status level that the rest of us are. Animal Jam begins to turn a blind eye towards these players because of their status.
Nobody cares that these YouTubers completely fabricated the 'Mighty Squad' happening. It was fake, but it made publicity.
Aparri socialengineered and scammed tons of little kids, but he earns money.
Videos of LilacPetal being horrible to small children litter the internet.
Snowyclaw has broken the Animal Jam rules tons of times behind Animal Jam's back.
I could go on.
The problem emerges now that normal players are denied the rights that the more popular players receive. Animal Jam files DMCA's about the MidWest JamCon being planned, sends the web host emails in the dead of night, getting their hard work removed, and doesn't send a single email to the organizers. Players apologizing profusely are left in the dust by the HQ, even though the more popular players were listened to. There are tons of situations that I don't even know of but would have seriously ruined some player's state of mind.
What did I do? I made a program that 'generated' gems and prepared to give it out for free to the world. No payment. Anybody could enjoy it. No scam, no hack, just a file you can download and run by yourself, for everyone who enjoys the game. Instead of asking me to stop, they monitored my IPs, phoned my mother and repeated the same crap that they told me in automated emails (after
I asked!). They literally stalked me across the internet for months. I was seriously so scared and exhausted.
I'm only one of those people. That's only one instance. Had a more popular player done what I did,
nothing would have happened.
I'm not telling you to stop playing Animal Jam. It's a fun game. But please don't do what I did and withhold the belief that they are looking out for us. They really aren't.
by Kabuski » Mon Nov 14, 2016 12:04 pm 
(♡˙︶˙♡)
