Blogger Tricks

Friday 20 April 2018

Season 4 Finale

Notice: All 800+ posts on the blog have been made private except this one, so that's why there's nothing here anymore. Sorry if you were looking for something, but it's all been locked away in the Disney vault forever!

Hello all.

So, as you have most definitely noticed, there has been a severe lack of any kind of posts or activity from the society for the past two months. No scammers, no updates, no community service, nothing. Vic and I owe you an explanation for this.
We’ll cut right to the chase - the society just isn’t working out as much as we wanted it to. Referring back to the post we made in November, some of the points there ended up coming back to haunt us after the ball started rolling.

For starters, scam catching itself feels like an awful laborious chore now. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a fun little thing we do to help the community, it’s just an excruciating experience that we want nothing to do with anymore. Confronting scammers, getting evidence, and writing posts is absolutely draining, which is far from the mindset we had initially going into this. Just dealing with the game’s community induces much more anger and stress than we’d like it to.

Not only that, but we also feel like the society’s purpose is obsolete considering the current state of Animal Jam itself. The game’s diminishing funds and lack of staff that actually care has resulted in its livelihood hanging by a thread for the last several months. There really isn’t much point pouring hours of hard work into a game that we all know isn’t going to last much longer.

There’s also the fact that it gets harder and harder to care about the game with each passing update. For us personally, there’s nothing of substance that would make us want to ever come back to it. We both have other activities that we’d rather indulge in than go on the game at all. We had a good, albeit short run with the Discord server. Despite all the people interested in joining and helping out, it just wasn’t the same as it once was, and we don’t think it ever will be. Things are changing, we’re getting older, and overall, it’s just an infinitely different experience.

It goes hand in hand with the general problem of trying to steer this whole ship with only two people at the wheel. The reason the society managed to stay afloat back in 2016 was that we had a team of people working on it, cooperating to make sure needs were met and things were getting done. But when you only have two half disinterested people with their own important things to do, it immediately becomes apparent just how hard being a single parent to a family of several dozen people is.

All of this, combined with our own piles of personal things we have to deal with has just boiled down to nothing getting done and nobody wanting to get anything done.

With that, we regret to inform you that we are permanently closing down the society. Maintaining it is tiring and stressful and none of us in higher ranks really want to do it. However, we appreciate your interest and dedication in our cause. If you are still interested in joining a group similar to what we strive to be, I would like to direct you all to the Animal Jam Special Agents Stopping Scammers, our sister society. Our Discord server will stay up for now, but we don’t quite know how active it’ll be.

We’ll be signing off for the last time today. Thank you for these rocky, stressful, but all-in-all enjoyable four and a half years, I’ll never forget them or the experiences we all had here. Now go out and have a good time.

11 comments:

  1. I, probably like a lot of users, do feel really guilty about not contributing, and sincerely apologize. I was really excited about joining when you gave me the opportunity, but got bored extremely quickly as every scammer I found was basically a carbon copy of the last one. I also had (and still do) a serious family issue begin to brew right around when I was recruited as a rookie, so catching scammers was the last thing on my mind.

    I’m really sorry, I wish I could have helped you guys more.

    -Sadmaki

    (Sorry if my profile isn’t loading properly, I’m signed in to my Google account but it says I’m commenting as “Unknown (Google)”.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't feel guilty about it. The problem was in what I mentioned in the post, it wasn't anything to do with the people that had joined as of recently.

      Delete
  2. Hey, Dan, Vic. I don't think you know me or have heard of me, but I'm one of the original (and now former) Council Member. I just wanted to thank you for all of your hard work and contributions to keeping up the blog and helping the AJ community in general :)

    I quit AJ as well as resigned from AJSWS several years ago, as I had to focus on my schoolwork, and the game didn't interest me anymore. I completely understand all of the stress and tiredness that comes as a result of maintaining a blog that seems like a chore, and it is quite an impressive feat to keep it running with only two people.
    I apologize for being inactive for so long- once upon a long, long, time ago, I compiled some ideas in an effort to reform AJSWS, but evidently, those ideas never happened xD

    To those who have helped AJSWS in any way or form- thank you, too. Upon reflection, being apart of this society and taking action against injustices has shaped me for the better. It shows that regardless of you only being "one person", you can make a difference in the community. You have the power, strength, and motivation to do so, and despite the seeming impossibility of it, every action you do will make a difference. Speaking of which, I encourage you to join clubs or organizations in your school/around your community. You will develop critical skills, as well as be more involved and informed :) [and also, university recruiters look for extracurricular involvement, if you're thinking ahead].

    TL;DR - Thank you, Dan and Vic, and all of our current/former agents, for their hard work in helping this blog and reforming AJ :) your work will not go wasted and has definitely made an impact. You can also go on out and make the same difference in your community :)

    Signing off,
    Fem

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, Fem. I was actually just thinking about the society the other day. I used to be Cerise, I'm just going by Dan now, so I most definitely do remember you.
      Even if the society didn't really do as much as we wanted, it did change me (and I think everyone else) as a person. I have a lot of regrets from then, especially about how I acted and treated other people, but the society was certainly an important part of my life.
      It's a little sad that everyone kinda went their separate ways after the society shut down, I haven't talked to most of the other agents in over a year (and I'm not even sure where I would go to find them).
      It's good to see you again though! Our door is open if you wish to reconnect with a couple of the old members who have managed to stick together.

      Delete
    2. thank you so much fem even though i never knew you personally you are very epic

      -alex (vic)

      Delete
  3. Looks like scammers still lurk,
    there scamming jammers, there hard at work
    looks like this didn't last
    scammers are having a blast
    scammers are stil here
    and they do apear
    and it looks like they have won.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a little pessimistic. Just because one society shut down doesn't mean scammers have "won". There's other scam catchers out there still.

      Delete
  4. well this society was a blast. i dunno why but i was thinking about it today. so i just hope ya'll are doing ok.

    -cowlan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. we're doing ok, but i guess i'm just speaking for myself there. pretty much everyone went their own separate ways when the society shut down in 2017 and nobody made much effort to stay in contact with each other after that as far as i know.
      right now i'm chilling out with my circle of used-to-be-agents (alex, zee, spell, fox, myself), and i must admit as cool as it is i miss the society and everything we had a whole lot. i don't care about animal jam itself even remotely anymore, the game doesn't have anything to make me want to go back. but good lord do i miss the massive group of people i was with and all the things we did together. as dumb and "cringy" i would've called those things awhile ago, i had such a good time and wish things hadn't ended as messily as they did.
      i know things would never go back to exactly how they used to be, the chat rooms suck, nobody cares about scam catching anymore and there's nothing we could base a society on that would make any real traction, but i would still love to actually hang out with the old agents again and do some stupid things together.
      if you ever feel like seeing us drop me a line, we're probably open

      Delete
  5. man i looked this up just to try to see how everyone was doing (it’s minty/theshewolf999 hahaha) and i’m sorry to hear that y’all shut down a while back. i haven’t been on animal jam in years but i really hope that zee, cerise, and everybody else are doing really well. you guys were a huge part of my life growing up and i really cherish all the late nights we spent together and the fun we had. i have a lot of love and care for you guys!! if anyone sees this, maybe we can exchange socials or something just to check up on each other- i really hope you’re all living fulfilled lives :) 💖 it sucks that the society ended, but we had a strong run lmfao. we were a FORCE back in the day. i know this is a 3 year old post and probably nobody will ever see it, but i was just thinking of y’all and felt like coming back to let u know how important you were and are.

    ReplyDelete