8 Years Later...

 ...And still, every time I see the word "shutter" I'm reminded of the poor soul who googled "slutter shades" in order to find the post about them on my blog. Yes, I can see what you google to get here, it's literally exactly the same as Youtube Analytics on my end.

But anyways, it's been 8 years. I just finally got around to resetting my password after the 2020 data breach. Someone hacked my spare at that time and took everything, even the damn flower bracelet that was still glitched on from the beta days. Contacted AJHQ and they went "we can't give you your items back, don't give out your password next time" even though they gave out my password. Very infuriating, kind of decided not to play out of spite for a while, but they were nice and helpful this time. Talked to some guy who's name was Ferdinand, but backwards. Dnanidref. Weird.

I have no idea why I'm writing this. It's almost 1am here. I can't believe it's been 8 years. I'm an adult now. My life looks so different. And yet I'm playing Animal Jam. 

The first thing I saw after logging in for the first time since 2020 is people talking about coming back after a long time of not playing. Like I was doing. I should have said something but I didn't trust myself enough to not accidently swear and get myself banned. The one guy was definitely the same age as me though, so it's nice to know I'm not the only person who's way, way too old for this. Actually, I'm convinced that a lot of people on there are quite a bit older than the target audience at this point. They're all talking about things that 11 year old me never would have cared about. Racism, censorship, the Amber Heard trial. Either they're older, or today's youth have been thrust into the realities of life way too soon. 

I think it's interesting to see how the culture has changed since I was on there. Despite everything, the biggest influence is the outside internet. People talk like they're on Twitter. Or I guess it's AAVE, but parts of it are pretty common on Twitter and the internet as a whole now. There's also a lot of people making masterpieces with their pronouns in them. Lots of LGBTQ folks. They've always been around, I remember defending an agender person on AJ deviantART in like 2015, but everyone's really open about it, which is a new thing. I'm glad everyone's so accepting. Everything else is mostly the same, though. The AJ-specific slang is the same. Most of the rares are the same. People still use "XD", to my delight. I've noticed it's very specific to this game; no one uses it outside of here anymore. 

I'm not really sure why I'm posting this. Just reminiscing on times past, I guess. Just wanted to say I'm here, I'm alive, I still think about this sometimes. This game is part of me, part of my history, and it always will be. 

Happy jamming,

Morningglory17

P.S. If you have a Neocities and aren't going to spontaneously combust if you see swearing, feel free to follow me there.