When I created this blog nearly nine (yes, nine!) years ago, Animal Jam was not even fully released, I was 12 years old, and I wanted to blog about something new and become a "popular" blogger. I had watched many Club Penguin players had years before me rack up millions of hits, and while I had a decent following on my own Club Penguin blog, I wanted to tap into a market that hadn't really been explored yet... which was a new game I found called Animal Jam.
The name "Animal Jam Community" was chosen almost completely randomly. There was no deep thought process used, no prediction that an actual community would ever be built around what couldn't possibly ever be anything more than a teenager's blog about an online game. And yet, nearly a decade later, it seems that a community has been built.
Because to my surprise, when I checked on this blog for the first time in my adulthood, it wasn't dead. It wasn't abandoned. It hadn't been automatically deleted for inactivity, or hacked by spammers, or left to die by the authors I once hired who I figured had moved on with their lives, just as I had. It had been kept up and passed on to new kids and teenagers, with their own ideas, their own styles, and their own goals. And Pumaa, my co-owner who I long assumed I would never hear of again, was also feeling nostalgic and making posts similar to the one I am writing now.
While AJC may not be the daily updates blog that drew 100,000+ monthly pageviews any longer, it has evolved to something I am much more proud of, something much more special. It has evolved into an archive of memories, both of what the game was like back in "the day" and of what we, the community, did and who we were.
While I agree with Pumaa's recent statements that some of this blog's content isn't exactly what we had in mind when we built this blog, I'm okay with most things staying up because every little piece of this blog seems to mean something to someone, and that makes it pretty special in my eyes. And if people want to keep building the community further--whether that be with new authors, or just with occasional posts from the ones who are already here--I'm happy to provide this blog as a platform for them to do so.
I can't promise I'll be back here to check on things very often. I can't even promise I'll think to stop by ever again. But maybe I will, and maybe other people who were, and still remain, a part of this community will feel nostalgic and drop by some time as well.
Whoever you are, if you're here, and if you consider yourself a part of this community--whether you were an author here, or a reader, or if you're just looking back at some of our memories for the first time now--I want to thank you for being a part of this. Never did I think my silly blog would ever become something bigger than my silly blog, but I'm very proud that it has.
Feel free to leave a comment with some memories, or some updates on your lives... or whatever you feel like leaving. I'll try to check back soon.
-Steven (Slidoo)
ps. can someone tell me why this video has nearly 400,000 views? What about it is significant enough that people are finding it and watching it 7 years later?
