That Time I Was "Stalked" on AJ

Hey Jammers! When I've not been doing work for school or just lying around and staring at the wall, I've been spending a lot of time working on this one video editing project I'm doing for fun! That's why it seems I've broken the promise I wrote on the left sidebar of this blog by letting a little over two weeks go by without a post ^^;

While posting more frequently is a goal of mine, I think I'm just going to accept that a small handful of posts a month is all I can manage for now. 

Also I'm pretty sure y'all are tired of hearing me repeatedly apologize for not posting enough. I've been going back through my older posts and it's kinda embarrassing that even as far back as 2015 it's been normal for me to open posts with "hey sorry for the lack of posting––" :S

So, moving on...

I bet you're surprised to see a post with this title, huh? 

Yep, it wasn't planned, and I've never talked about this before, but I thought it might be an entertaining story to tell! So grab some water or something so you can stay hydrated while you read all about it. 

Keep in mind, all of what I'm about to share actually happened. If only I had the energy to write one of those hilarious Animal Jam creepypastas... but no. This is all from memory!

Aaaand unfortunately, because it happened a while ago and I was actually pretty nervous at the time, I didn't take any actual screenshots. (And if I did, they're on my old computer and I still haven't moved over the files yet pffft)

Because of this, all I have is my non-exact memory and a handful of dramatic reenactments that I threw together just for this post X)

~ ❦ ❦ ❦ ~

Long ago, in the distant age of approximately August 2012, a wolf who looked like the one pictured above followed me and couple of my AJ buddies around for days on end.

Without being on any of our buddy lists.

I guess I'll start where this twisted tale of treachery begins... by the glowing fireplace of the Hot Cocoa Hut.

My AJ buddy and IRL friend Sparkle Alienrose (we'll call them by their current animal name) and I were just hanging out, having a pretty chill day with some virtual hot cocoa. At this point in time, we may have been talking about what the next school year would look like for us– you see, both of us were moving up to a new school, and I can imagine we must have been wondering what awaited us in the fall of 2012.

So we were talking, maybe joking around a little... and then a wolf appeared.

*dramatic reenactment*

Well, he immediately put us off. 

Aside from looking kinda like Fman122 (and possibly even having the same animal name), he was dropping the vampire emote left and right like some kind of roleplayer that got loose from Sarepia Forest. 

And what's more... he was speaking in a really weird and vaguely threatening way. I don't recall anything he said exactly, but it was most definitely more than you could say in chat today with the current filters. (Fun fact: this was probably the time on AJ when you could say pretty much anything you wanted as long as you censored part of it with asterisks) 

Clicking the wolf's animal name, we saw that his username was rememberthe5th. Odd. 

But out of nowhere, he started coming after me in particular. 

*dramatic reenactment*

At this point, Sparkle Alienrose and I panicked and ran away to a different server, leaving rememberthe5th to his devices in the Hot Cocoa Hut.

Maybe not much actually happened... but I remember being genuinely freaked out. 

*not actually what happened*

We thought that would be the end of it...but no.

Because he followed us.

We ran to Sarepia Forest. He followed us there. We ran to a random party. He followed us there too.

And then we ran to Sparkle's locked den...

*dramatic reenactment*

And there he was. 

I was convinced that rememberthe5th was a hacker, and it scared me quite a bit. During this time, I was even more emotionally involved in Animal Jam than I am now, so even though this whole thing happened in the virtual world of Jamaa, it felt like it was happening in real life. I think this is why people hacking into your AJ account can be so difficult for many people– it can feel too real.

Anyways, I don't remember a lot of what rememberthe5th was saying at this point, but I do remember it was freakin' me out. I might have even been on the phone with Sparkle in that moment for emotional support– that may have been how they gave me the username of a Jammer whose den I should go to.

*not an actual screenshot of that den, but just for reference*

That username took me to a den FILLED with trees. Perfect for hiding from certain black-and-white stripey wolves.

You don't see this as much anymore now that Seasonal Trees have been out of shops for a long time, but forest dens used to be a popular thing to make. Perfect for roleplayers, hide and seek, or for just generally creating a feeling of mystery, forest dens were beloved by all.

Unfortunately...

*dramatic reenactment*

The trees did not dissuade our friend rememberthe5th. 

So me, Sparkle Alienrose, and our other buddy catlover25 (who joined us in running around and screaming) ran around from forest den to forest den, hoping to lose rememberthe5th among the digital branches and leaves. 

And yes, we did report this wolf a million times, which eventually banned him... but he eventually came back from the grave as rememberthe6th.

After a while though, it became a lot less nerve-racking. All rememberthe5th really did was follow us, put up the vampire emote, say some stuff, and repeat. 

Later, I finally decided to go back to my own locked den, and what do ya know– he couldn't get in! Though, that didn't stop him from sending a bunch of eerie Jam-a-Grams, so I finally blocked him.

*overdramatic reenactment*

(In reality, I think it was a whole lot of spammed "This is a fun game!"/"You're my best buddy!" Jam-a-Grams. I don't think those phrases are in the pre-written JAG messages anymore, but that's just what I remember)

Things seemed to quiet down for a bit... so Sparkle Alienrose and I went over to catlover25's den to talk and try to get our minds off of it. Or did we? I don't remember exactly, but this whole chaos didn't just happen in one day-- it might have been a few days to a week.

Regardless of when it happened, here's what I do remember. We were all in catlover25's den, calm but still shaken up. And then...

*dramatic reenactment*

Rememberthe5th was completely invisible to catlover25 and I, but Sparkle saw him sitting against the wall.

*dramatic reenactment. Poor catlover25...*

This was the last freaking straw. I was actually terrified.

I immediately logged out, logged into my parent dashboard, locked my account, and it stayed that way for at least a week. Which was a big deal, considering that playing AJ was like breathing to me. 24/7 bro 

In the meantime, I was sending terrified emails to Sparkle and Sparkle was sending terrifying emails back. In fact, I remember immediately deleting nearly every single email I sent or got that involved rememberthe5th because I was scared that my parents would find out that an actual AJ hacker was terrorizing me and stop me from ever playing AJ again. 

One of those deleted emails, I only half-remember. Which is probably for the best! You see, I vaguely remember Sparkle emailing me exactly what they saw rememberthe5th say when they were in catlover25's den and WOOO BOY it haunted me. 

But for the purpose of this post, let's just pretend that these were our friend rememberthe5th's final words to me:

HEY HEY HEY H-HEY HEY BUDDY

HEY H-HEY CAN I GET A 

woop woop

HEY BUDDY

CAN I GET A

woop woop

HEY BUDDY

YAAAAAAAAAAAYYY

wooooo

wooooo

1234!!!!!

1... 2... 3... 4...

1234!!!!!

I love Animal Jam!

THIS IS THE BEST!!!!!!!

~ ❦ ❦ ❦ ~

Flash forward 8 years later to late June 2020.

My family and I were moving between homes, everything is chaos in the world and in my life, but even though we're a bunch of states apart and don't talk regularly, hey, at least Sparkle Alienrose is still friends with me! They don't really play AJ anymore, which is understandable.

So anyway, it was around this time that I started thinking about the whole rememberthe5th incident, and I'll be honest, the thought that someone hacked into the game to follow me around still gave me a little anxiety even all that time later!

I mentioned it to Sparkle:

"...on a completely unrelated side note, do you remember when that AJ hacker stalked us when we were 11? that was freaky"

And then... Sparkle wrote me back:

"i have something terrible to admit. i was rememberthe3rd or whatever and i was just pulling a prank on u. i have NEVER admitted that till now cuz i felt guilty... hgthfjdhsjs i'm so sorry"

FOR 8 YEARS......

And now, 8 years and a couple of horrible image edits later, the legend of rememberthe5th comes to a happy end!

I am super relieved, and I remain super impressed that Sparkle managed to pull a fast one on me for that long.

This post that took me two days to write is dedicated to Sparkle Alienrose, who may or may not ever see this. Thank you for making it so I had alllll this content to post about today!! I hope I'm not embarrassing you too much by putting this on my silly blog <3

To everyone else, I hope you managed to get a smile out of this storytime post! I'm gonna try to shoot for maybe two more posts before the month is up, but we'll see what happens.

See you in Jamaa!!

Sig edited with help from Dogo :)