The Capitalist Hellscape of Animal Jam

are we rocking with the non member pillow room bunny cosplay lads 😩
add me on animal jam! i have shops in my den too :0 user is meowmeowmeow17
thank u to anyone who’s footage i used in this vid!!!
My instagram: / whathefuckisacasserole
My Redbubble: casserolestan.redbubble.com
go drink some water ik ur dehydrated
#animaljam #flashgames #nostalgia #videoessay #deepdive

[@roselita223]

Crazy how I'm enjoyed the game again after so many years. I started in 2013, now I'm 20 enjoying a kids game I grew up with. I noticed there's an increased number of returning players for nostalgia reasons and most tend to stay longer, like me. It makes me happy that the game has not shut down after so many years

[@Vivian_1100]

I feel less bad knowing I'm not the only adult playing LOLL

[@Z5Z5Z5]

its okay thats me with Wizard101. Started at 9 years old now im 22

[@highheelshighfeels]

Me too, I fr just opened my old account from when I started pw and it's been amazing 😭 I adore it ngl

[@levibest2409]

I mean they brought back all the super rare items that were before the diamond shop existed and all my items suddenly were for sale so I basiclsly stopped playing after that lol and even now I return and there's just.... Nothing

[@margauxvirra]

Truly I was like 7 when i first played this game with my friends in games like club penguin ,moshi monsters, etc. but we stopped playing after grade 4 but last december I went home from university and my youngest brother had me search up games i used to play because i didnt want to play roblox with him so i did i searched not thinking it still exists i searched Cp and MM but theyre gone then i searched aj and i was like wait omg this game still exists? a year later im still playing lol and i got my dream item of the starlight wings

[@cherrybeebee1062]

Animal jam is so fucking different now, its so empty and i swear everyone online is 18+ and on the spectrum and they just vibe. There was an argument in coral sands like last week and everyone there just gathered around to watch it like we were transported back to high school watching a school fight. Afterwards a couple of us just vibed as eyeballs in the water, talking about poop and fnaf lmao i was competing with someone on who would be the last eyeball left and i stayed there for 5 hours not even joking. I won btw, i legit started at like 2am and went to bed at 7am. Mental illness man.

[@Dovetears]

i'd say this is the most accurate description of modern AJC i've ever seen lmfao

[@molly.graceh]

I was a victim to the 2020 data breach and I was so sad because I was FINALLY healing my inner child by becoming rare 😭😭 lmaoo

[@causethefox]

Same here, my account got completely locked out and I no longer have access of it

[@Pinkie-Dash]

@@causethefox Same. I had my acc since 2014 which was when I started playing it, was well as PW since it came out. I worked so hard on it. I still need to try to contact AJHQ to get my acc back

[@SaveTheSunBear]

It’s heartbreaking to see no warrior cat roleplays in Seripea (I never learned how to spell it) Forest anymore

[@capristone]

if we all band together we can bring it back lol, I've talked to tons of people who really miss it

[@elokin300]

@@capristone wasn’t there also a den people would go to find warriors rps? I always went to Sarepia Forest but apparently people did that too. Maybe if everyone decided on a specific den, or a specific world to rp on (like how traders go to Aldan) the community could be revived?

[@darlingva9951]

@@elokin300there was, Madjasterx but their account isn’t active anymore/den is locked. I made a den for it tho bc I wanna see it revived

[@anonymousforcommentslol6075]

my experience with animal jam as a kid was that i wasn’t rare and could never get rare, but i had been treated with respect because i was a member. if my membership ran out i couldn’t get another until the next christmas, and i would be treated worse on the game, actively ignored, and talked down to. it wasn’t awful, cuz it wasn’t like, real, but it was annoying. the game was conditioning little kids to be classist 😂😂

[@Kitten420_]

😂😂😂

[@anonymousforcommentslol6075]

@@Kitten420_ the good news is that i play it now and nms are treated with much more respect!! the audience is all older now so we probs know better but idk why people were blatantly classist as kids

[@hayleydanler6683]

I'm surprised a video about the capitalist hellscape of AJ doesn't even touch on the crazy market of AJ items for real money...the really shady discord servers at their height sometimes had transactions hitting 1k

[@blondecure]

i know countless people whove been scammed by those 😭

[@blondecure]

i got so sick of the sweaty elites in bradys that i just traded all my rare shit away for cute items 💗

[@xXkreekXx]

I was an animal jam kid and my mom would never buy me anything and i always quit and come back due to frustration.

[@Emperor-Quill]

In AJ I have pretty decent items for a nonmember, but in Play Wild, I am a God.

[@Spouxls]

Avid AJ Play Wild player here, just wanted to tell you that you do actually have some good items from what I've seen in your inventory, the items I saw were Feathered Shoulder Armor, Crystal Arm Bands, Jamaaliday Gift Body (?), Rare Designer Shawl, both Arabian clothing sets, the face items are worth the most for those sets, and your Legendary Glove. Other stuff that's different in AJPW, the gap between members and non-members is very small, classism isn't as prominent because of this. Also, Sapphires are worth less than Diamonds, I don't know the exact ratio, but an animal costs 10 diamonds on classic, and animals on play wild cost 150 (recently raised to 170 cuz AJ is being greedy). Pretty sure I've rambled enough about this silly game, hope this helped!! ^^

[@PastelSolar]

I love animal jam and it holds a very, very special place in my heart. I came back to play it recently and was hit with a wave of nostalgia. They are making a remake of the aj classic aswell which is super cool, but it probably won't come out for a long time. Because of the death of flash they have to transfer all of ajs assets to a new program so it can be updated again, which will be a very tedious process, but I really hope it will bring back old players and even bring in some new ones!

[@luv4eva1111]

do you know what is the remake gonna be called? that sounds really cool :D

[@Goldstarri]

This is such a great video! also btw i absolutely love your outfit! i also did the whole warning people about scammers thing like it was a full time job haha. And yeah i love the more mature vibe it's got going on now since the playerbase has grown up. I remember back in 2015 i'd get in to so many arguements with people cause they were being rude right out of the blue, copying my outfits for a reaction, etc, but there's literally none of that anymore which is very nice to see, it's so much more chill and pleasant to play now. i also lost my first spiked collar to a trust trade. it was a pink long, and i remember crying and i ended up quitting for like 4 months until i heard about the possibility of getting spikes in lucky clovers so i came back to the game for that and got a red long from it lmao i quit aj back in 2020 cause of feral, i got into wave 7 of beta testing and it was my new hyperfixation and it became my new virtual home basically, which previously was aj. i loved feral to the moon and back so much. i'd always dreamed of a a game like aj but for 13+ audiences with more customization. but we all know how that game went down with the whole cinder situation so... in 2022 i returned to aj and i've been getting just as into it again as i was back when i was a kid. tho the difference now is i don't really care about rares anymore. my dream item as a kid was always a LPHD but i literally couldnt care less about getting one now. i'm mostly here to make cool outfits, decorate my den, trade for items i actually think look nice regardless of worth, and have a great time with buddies I've also gotten really into AJ play wild lately, especially now with the whole lightside darkside thing going on. i LOVE the darkside wolves and items so much. i hate the simon says game you have to play to get them tho but its worth it haha. Play wild has been so fun to explore, there's so many new and cool features i wish classic had!

[@moojuice9614]

i started playing again and i was in complete shock when i found out that the wall ivy den item is worth a decent long wrist because i remember buying it from the shop and then recycling it because i didn't care for it that much. this game makes me feel so old 💀

[@hannahukki]

omg i wasn't expecting to find my own clips in here, that really shocked me LMAOOO, love this video, this game really is a mess but its our mess😅💗

[@tabitharust304]

So, this is my Animal Jam story. Basically this game was my childhood. Absolutely loved it. And actually, it wasn't too long ago that I quit(ill explain in a bit). Personally, since I didn't have many friends(and none who played AJ) I played by myself and I found trading uninteresting and not worth my time. I probably wouldn't have understood trading anyway, I was literally a kid. I enjoyed the game by itself, as it had so many things that other games didn't have. A lot of these(at this point probably all of them) flash MMO games were heavily pay-walled(it is hard to blame them as these games had to make money somehow, although manipulating kids into making their parents buy stuff that wasn't even real maybe isn't the best option...), animal jam was no exception and they didn't mind sticking it in your face all the time("this is what you COULD have gotten, but you didn't, because you're a non-member, haha" granted, they didn't stick it in your face as much as other games, thank goodness, but there was so many things you just couldn't access or explore if you were free to play). I convinced my parents to get me membership not only to flex on the "inferior" players but also because it made the game so much more fun to play. I also think maybe the game wouldn't be as classist as it is/was if the game itself didn't mention it all the time??? "Join the club!" essentially saying if you weren't a member you weren't a part of the "cool" kids. Well, I guess it worked, at least for little me 😂(thanks mom for willing to pay for fictional pets and diamonds so we could run around and talk to other random kids and bully the non-members - side note: I myself didn't actually bully the non members, don't come at me for that, because I was a nonmember myself for a very long time before I got membership) I played classic for a very long time, I did join PW when it first came out, mostly stuck with classic until later. I quit about a year ago because of multiple issues. 1. Something super dumb and weird happened with my classic account when my membership expired, I'm pretty sure it's a glitch but by the time I reached out to AJHQ about it I don't think they would have been able to do anything anyways all my animals but 2 of the non member ones that I chose to keep disappeared because, honestly idk what happened, I don't think it was a hack but I must've logged off when it was doing the "your membership has expired, pick 2 of your pets to keep for now but we're gonna save the rest still", and then when I came back to it, all the rest of my animals were gone. Since that happened, I was mainly playing PW during that anyways so it didn't matter a lot to me, then a few months later I think I got hacked or something cuz all but like 4 of my PW pets were gone(keep in mind, I was very attached to these pets and it made me really sad and it would take a LONG time to get pets like those ones back) I honestly don't know what happened but I don't think the AJ help center was able to help with this either. Also I realize it may have something to do with the security breach. idk because it happened much later after 2020, I was actively playing it. So those was the main reason of me quitting. 2. Wildworks had some drama and issues, not only did feral shut down before I was able to play it(that made me so sad, I was gonna play that game one day and didn't ever get to it, I regret not playing it earlier) but the whole cinder and NFT drama. And also I don't think it has been as fun/educational as when they partnered with Nat Geo, with club geoz and other educational stuff like that.(I am NEVER gonna forgive them for taking away that Brady Barr adventure game thing. The one where you would watch some videos and choose which path he went next. It was so fun to choose the wrong path on purpose and watch him suffer................................ anyway. The last time I went looking for an archive of it I couldn't find barely any videos or anything about it, which is sad because that was a really fun little educational experience.) 3. paywall. I don't want to spend my money on this game to have fun on it. It isn't a good experience when you are very limited in what you can do in a game, and I'd rather play other free games that don't rely on paywalls for a good game experience. Seriously, without membership(even with membership) it is really hard to get currency like sapphires and to play the events. Also it is hard to think of why I should pay for this game again when almost all my progress and pets got deleted. There is no reason.(if there is any slight chance you are reading this AJ, please give me my animals and pets back and I would play your game again in a heartbeat. I would pay membership, I would do a lot of things to be able to play this game like I used to again) 4. The game has become a different experience. This is not bad, but the players have also changed too. I see more people play this game for the items and values and trading, not for fun. I'm not trying to go after the players, you can play AJ and AJPW however you want. I'm just saying the players and big events changed this game overall, and I love both AJ and PW but if I went back to this game(which I won't unless you give me my stuff back AJHQ >:c) I would probably only play classic, mostly for nostalgia but also because it hasn't changed a ton over the recent years and I would still genuinely enjoy it. Well, I think that's the end of my AJ story. From this video, I loved your take on things and really shows how much this game has influenced people(for the better and the worse 😅) It's always fun to look back on AJ considering how much time we spent on it as kids. I also agree with the points you made. If you read all of this, that was a big waste of your time and I apologize in advance.

[@CupidsJerboa]

This video pretty much sums it up lol, I played animal jam from when I was like.. 11-14 i think, and hopped back onto it recently and couldn’t do much because the economy has changed so much and I could barely do anything besides run around and try to make friends, but I just kinda got yelled at by people for some reason 😭 animal jam has always had a sort of strange hostile environment, at least for me. I still log on every few months tho just cuz I like to look at the crispy graphics (compressed 3D models in flash media my beloved) Btw this video is really good!! You definitely deserve more attention :]

[@kaliska_is_here]

thank you animal jam for teaching me my entire worth as a person is solely defined by my socioeconomic status :)

[@mustard9808]

I did come back to AJ maybe a few years ago, for a few months. But I just can't mentally handle the constant stress of the rabid economy. Here are three short and "fun" things that have happened to me in AJ, - Having my pink worn trust trade scammed. I was very upset! - My best friend had their account hacked into. Very rare account with spikes, worns, head-dresses, all of the sort. I feel terrible for them because not only was their account made useless, but all those childhood memories ruined. - When I did come back to AJ through the 3D Animal Jam, fossils and dinosaurs were being added. They added Limited items, that would only be produced in certain quantities such as 500. I got one of these items from the first wave of them, a very rare and special time. Then I immediately gave it away to someone for some gems so I could afford something I actually wanted.

[@snorkmimimimi]

I actually thought they had shut the game down, I really wanna go back to it because my interest in it was kinda brought back recently because of my older sister mentioning it to me, I started playing animal jam when I was in 3 grade, I’m 18 now, it was big for me around the age of 11-13, I met one of my longtime friends because of AJ, we’ve been friends since 2018, it all started cuz I was hosting a rp in my den, I was really cringey during that era, but I was also a kid, so I’m trying to be nicer to myself about all that silly stuff I did when I was little. I was never a really rich player, I didn’t have any rare items at all, I was never a really good trader and I always spent my money super fast, I always wanted to get a spike, maybe I’ll go back and play and see what I can get now

[@AfternoonAJ]

dude how are u only at 1.1k u have so much potential this is great

[@decapodAJ]

we love animal jam!!! (screaming and crying in agony)

[@Ocelo]

As an aj classic player turned ajpw player I spent so much time learning the play wild worth system that now I have to relearn the classic one So glad to play in this capitalist hellscape with traumatizing children and classism sprinkled in! 👍 THIS COMMENT IS WORTH -5 BLACK LONGS, WITH UNDECENT ADS

[@SakuraOwl]

omg this was once worth -5 black longs?! it’s worth 20 lphds now!!!

[@ChubuPeng]

i remember a few years ago playing lucky clovers as a non-member and cheesing the animal dance parts (apparently they changed it from 4 animals to just 2) by quickly dancing in one spot then quickly dancing on another 😂 had lag on my side

[@aspen-]

love ur aesthetic! i just got back into animal jam after not playing for years and its honestly quite fun lol

[@denizium.]

I have never heard of or played this game before.. BUT YOUR COMMENTARY IS SO ENTERTAINING I LOVE YOUR ROOM AND OUTFIT TOO!! ITS ALL SO PRETTY!!

[@Kandiegutz]

i got called the f slur, the r slur, and told to off myself on aj back in May because someone found out i'm nonbinary and autistic, also got called the n word but i told him i'm mexican if he's gonna call me a slur call me the right one

[@1co293]

dont share personal info?? its become so normalized to share mental issues etc but thats the last thing u should do online or public. cause then that happens..! safety is more important then people knowing about personal things.

[@jy742]

recently got back into animal jam and holy crap has it been so fun. thank you for making this video, even as a kid i thought people were weird going feral over a spiked collar lolol

[@viridiankat8527]

I was an animal jam kid, and bro I had such a bad savior complex 💀💀 I grinded for gems to save up for rare item mondays and did hard mode adventures, and I was a “scammer police” kid who made callout posts on amino

[@jackunvailable]

I used to play the spinoff when I was younger, had no idea it was a capitalist hellscape 💀

[@xsunflwrr]

This video is so well made, how does it have so little views?

[@Shadowonwater]

Man It's been so long since I've played Animal Jam but that was my shit back in the day. I remember I lost interest as I started getting older and didn't have as much time to play. I remember the time I stopped was around the time Eagles were introduced.

[@AstralPawzz]

this whole channel is underrated, this video was really good :D

[@Santiago_geck0nix]

Me and my childhood best friend used to play Animal Jam a lot, we both really wanted the membership, the thing is, her parents got it for her, but I never did. One time, she had her account open in her computer, literally right in front of me, and she left to do something, I almost tried to trade me some items of hers but she came back so I couldn't do it😔

[@waffleweirdo1252]

We are literally the same person. I started an Animal Jam youtube channel at 11 which is how I have 300 subscribers with no videos (I deleted them years ago because criiinge) I 100% agree with you on the animal jam being a good stepping stone. I fell for the editthiscookie scam (If you know what this means you're a real one) and lost my prized possession, my red long. Cried to my parents for hours but learned a valuable lesson. At least I learned by getting scammed pixels instead of real money.

[@artemisrose6098]

I made the bold decision a few months ago to get a membership. Havent regretted it yet😂😂

[@sillygoose2347]

Animal jam was my life, I quit bc I was an intense roleplayer and the chat filter was stupidly strict, a few years ago I was into feral though and it was so fun but ofc wildworks fucked it up

[@Clovercu]

Wow, just found this video and channel and this is a really good video. def gained a new subscriber!

[@pcbb_carley]

it’s funny, atp it’s just players who have nostalgia for the game… including me.

[@BagOfButtons]

Idk about the english side of AJ, but the spanish side was pretty chill, i had 3 best friends on there and we would chat a lot, what was rly cool is that the "status" didnt matter for us, i was a nm and didnt have many valuable stuff, the other was a member and the other was a rare nm, we got along really well. I remember we used to play a lot of adventures togehter and we would gift eachother stuff, very fun while it lasted. But we stopped talking to eachotehr bc one day one of them (the member) said that we couldn't be friends anymore, dawg i literally cried that day i felt so bad bc i didnt know what did i do for her to drop that bomb on me

[@milkiblossomtheferalpossum]

surprising how this video doesn’t have like. 50k views. i picked up the game after years of not playing recently and it’s basically the exact same i nearly got swayed to pay for membership again 💀

[@Halipan_]

I recently started playing ajpw again after a half year break (I couldn’t get member on aj classic) Thank you KZbin, this video getting recommended is well timed. Also on ajpw the painting thing finally added layers (I practised one layer art all these years for nothing)

[@linkstan69]

Wow i found a hidden gem of a channel

[@bonkersborzoi]

Meowmeowmeow17 here with another Animal Jam video :) i love this video!!! a good look at the game a lot of us are still playin >3

[@soldierforsmelly2729]

you know id love to have hundreds or even thousands of sapphires like bepper and wisteria and all of them had. but i could never get myself to spend so much money only to get maybe 75 per purchase.

[@BurntLime]

good vid! underrated channel :]

[@OMGkawaiiiAngel-Chan]

Underrated

[@ModernFennec]

I agree, KAngel

[@waffles321]

I tried to get back into it but like, i tried for 3 days straight to get a worn, i traded like 20 rares for one and no one accepted, this economy has destroyed me

[@decapodAJ]

you have to be on at the right time, or network. i was able to get 80+ clothing betas in 2 days. and before that i grinded for den betas to be able to get the cbs.

[@rlperrin7307]

Keep up the good work !

[@f1shwhiskerz]

PETZ CATZ 2 JUMPSCARE... (positive)

[@enoughnonymity]

i love this hahah. also what is the MUSIC IN THE BACK ITS SCRATCHING MY BRAIN

[@lungdisease666]

im 22 and i still play it sometimes

[@lonepugaj8943]

OMG ONE OF MY VIDEOS WAS USED AHHH so cool, i still play aj btw :)) the clip is at 8:24

[@raccoon2968]

I always log back in like everyone few couple months lol. And I remember coming in when shops were new then I didn’t much care until like almost a year later when I came back on again and everything like sky rocketed in value but then some didn’t. Like I remember some headdresses a year ago was like 175 black longs. I was like wow, but then also building up to being rare is so much easier now because of the shops. I found so many rare items for cheap and bought them, then make art to get spike and sell them for like 200 diamonds to then buy more rarer items. Then cuz I found a aj item sever, I just bought myself a headdress 💀 now I just go back to logging in once in a while and with all the new things I have, I just decorate and wait for any new items to collect and decorate with. With this tho the game kinda sucks cuz it just turned into everyone trading and sticking to their own friend groups. It’s still fun tho.

[@LoryplayKD]

1:05 none of those words are in the Bible.. pffff this was just so unexpected the first minute of the video, subscribing just cuz of it

[@LoryplayKD]

I actually got more rares from making den maps for people than art, then hosted art cons to get art of my characters and it was like that on repeat pff

[@scp-phenomenon014]

i wish i'd given away all my items when i had access to my animal jam account lol, i had a TON of items that musvte aged well. think the data breach made it so my password reset or something so i cant log in to it but i still remember my account.

[@skatetoad3862]

I’ve been on animal jam almost my entire life, I’m 21 now and I still don’t understand the economy on there

[@Smiledog15578]

I swear as an adult ajpw is so much less hectic than classic. I remember begging my mom for memberships and now you dont have to be a member to grind on the capitalist wheel. Being on classic is fun to me now cuz so many ppl my age are coming back but the items are not worth my time.

[@destroymarcy]

what is the statue to the right of ur sakura miku one? its so tuff i want it

[@Anikathewolf]

My childhood was Webkinz and they ruined it, it’s not the same anymore

[@sapphiremoonaj]

Lol I still play it

[@DR.R3TR0]

fun

[@lucien9815]

Whaaaat wall ivy is worth a lot now?!?!

[@pops_rocks]

The maple wings are worth a lot

[@kasoa666]

i love your hat so much 😭😭😭 where is it from???

[@1co293]

this game is still fun A LOT OF FURRIES THO which isnt always good bc... hello they be weird..! other than that its fun to play

[@raccoon2968]

Also I feel like you should keep the title screens on for a few more seconds longer cuz it just flashes 💀

[@cholocortez4887]

Cool God bless 💚💚

[@iimuffinsaur]

I was a club penguin kid then an animal jam preteen LOL I cringe when I think of the horrible trade I did when I was younger of the RIM Headdress for a short black spike 😭😭

[@iimuffinsaur]

I still have all my mech angel wings I think and my worns which I was so proud of LOL. Also the jamaaliday sweaters and flower crowns!

[@iimuffinsaur]

All my spikes though except like some weird diamond shop were taken through a hack though 😔😔😔

[@_toxinkimso7964]

I was the biggest scammer, got shark tails, 2 headdresses, so many things.

[@kearafox6843]

Bruh

[@hijidltkr]

i'm assuming this is more for people who have already played animal jam because i'm still struggling to figure out what's going on with it

[@anubishound8179]

Do you like Izzzyzzz?

[@DerlChur]

I used to pick aj accounts and sell items. times were wild in 2019.

[@1co293]

pick?

[@DerlChur]

@@1co293 take their username and password from a certain program. Picking them out

[@IslandFurby]

Meow meow meow buddy requests are off

[@pastellisushi]

Are you still playing?

[@tamperproofpaws]

:3

[@commentsnowman]

Its not a capitalist hellhole its a game where the makers need to make money

[@nananoodle5020]

Some of the players are capitalist though.

[@Quartermaster1463]

I hate how it’s all about shops and trading. No one wants to play any other adventure besides return of the phantoms and phantom portal because it offers randomized rewards. A bunch of bullsh.t to me, it’s so unfun now