The Mysterious Disappearance of Kinyonga

THIS IS ALL A 100% TRUE DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF A ONCE-FAMOUS JAMMER

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I don’t know if anyone here remembers her, but there was once a famous jammer called Kinyonga. She ran one of the most popular AJ blogs of her time, the Animal Jam Times, and hosted numerous popular contests. Unfortunately, as the blog format died out and was replaced by YouTube channels, Kinyonga faded into obscurity.

Google her, and you’ll find numerous pages either about her or by her.

As Kinyonga disappeared from the minds of people, she also seemed to disappear from the game. Literally. Try searching for her username, Kinyonga, and you’ll get the “that jammer couldn’t be found” screen.

So, the question remains: what happened to Kinyonga? Maybe her account was deleted, maybe she was banned… but… what if there’s another explanation?

Diving a bit deer into Kinyonga’s history, you come across this post on another blog:

http://animaljamdownpour.blogspot.com/2012/09/rare-item-monday-and-hacker-o.html

Several years ago, Kinyonga was hit hard by a tragic hacking. Ultimately she got her account and items back, and this incident certainly did not cause her disappearance, as she continued playing for over two more years.

We know that it is not possible to delete your account. You can disable your account, or change the username, but you cannot actually delete it yourself. The primary options are that she changed her username and that she got banned. We can rule out the “changed her username” theory for one simple reason:

https://imgur.com/a/7ICBms2

Plot twist! I was buddies with Kinyonga (on this particular account), and despite her disappearance, I still have her on my buddy list under the same username. This verifies that she did not have her username changed, nor did she have her account deleted by AJHQ (if she did, her account would have a greyed-out tiger silhouette as the avatar)

Could she have been banned? It’s possible, but highly unlikely. She was an extremely prominent jammer, and as the author of a popular blog and a big part of the (earlier) AJ community, she surely wouldn’t have been banned. In fact, having known her personally, I know she never did anything to warrant being banned.

Ultimately, we know that Kinyonga quit AJ. You can find several posts on other blogs about her quitting the game and the blog. However, she still had her account at the time of her quitting, which means it does not explain her disappearance.

So what happened to her? What caused this famous Jammer’s account to just disappear, and (save for the buddy lists of a few people that knew her) become impossible to locate? Could it have something to do with the hacking incident? Can her account possibly be returned to the game? Surely digging into the game’s past and the history of its community would reveal a few answers about her account’s mysterious disappearance.