On the Trail of Mari_Jhane by ChromeFox

Message from the webmaster, please note, by placing this here, I am not taking sides or stating who is right or wrong. This is simply a story I found very intriguing from an outsider perspective. This is in no way an attempt to slander Mari_Jhane or Neopets.

Here’s my story. I know it’s long, but I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s a true story that, unfortunately, happened to me.

***Before I begin, I have a few things to say. First off, keep in mind that these events occurred over a year ago when Neopia was much younger. Things were much different on Neopets than they are today. Second, I want to say that everything here is true, just as I remember it. Some of it may sound unusual and difficult to believe, and I even had trouble believing it as everything rolled out before me. Sit back, because this is a very long and very strange story, and I hope it never happens again.***

In mid-2000, Neopia was just beginning to thrive. The Staff had rolled out Uber-Faerie Quests, and those of us anticipating the arrival of the Battledome couldn’t get enough of them. We took granted that we could get them whenever we wanted, naively thinking they’d be this way forever.

My name was ShadowFox123, but my neofriends and fellow regs at the Evil Things and Monster Sightings board just called me Fox. I never was rich, because I blew all my neopoints on Quests, and so my pets, Salei the Wocky, Troby the Kiko, and Zarri the Aisha, were pretty powerful. I’d never been scammed, knew every nook and cranny of the site, and was co-leader of the Battledome Alliance guild. Neo-Life was good.

A week ago, I’d surfed around for Neopets web sites (back then, there weren’t too many). My favorite was that of Trekker13. One day, I decided to put “trekker13” in the Neopets search and see what came up. She had four pets, a nice shop, and her look-up had a link to another site of hers, one that was anti-Mari_Jhane…waitaminute, who was Mari_Jhane? I’d heard of her somewhere. So I investigated the site and found out that Mari_Jhane had put Trekker13 on her “Loser List,” whatever that was.

Bored, I decided to check out Mari_Jhane’s shop. It was absolutely enormous (it rivaled Hrobi’s shop) and it was obvious that she was very wealthy. Sure enough, there was a link to the Loser List, and sure enough, when I went there, Trekker13’s name was on it. The description said that the Loser List was a list of scammers, h@ckers, harassers, and troublemakers. I was positive that Trekker didn’t fit into any of those categories, so I felt obligated to defend her (I didn’t really know her, but I was kinda stupid back then).

I politely neomailed Mari_Jhane, asking her to remove Trekker’s name from the list, but she rudely refused, saying that Trekker deserved to be on there, and she didn’t want to waste her time talking to me. When I persisted, she threatened to report me, and did, but it didn’t do any good. I was forced to stop neomessaging her. All I could think about was what a rude snob she was!

I then went to Mari_Jhane’s message board to sound off, and I was shocked by what I found. Everyone there was posting about what a jerk she was, some even saying she scammed them! In fact, the only one supporting her was a guy named Dkstriker, who I would eventually meet again. I left a post and called it a night.

The next morning, I neomailed Trekker for the first time telling her what happened. She ended up being very friendly and intelligent, just the opposite of what you’d expect to be on a “Loser List.” She gave me the URL for another site of hers called “Ban Mari_Jhane.” It was a petition to get rid of Mari_Jhane. I checked out the petition and found over 50 signatures, many saying that she scammed them or one of their neofriends.

Later, I went onto the NeoChats, and — wouldn’t ya know it — I ran into you-know-who. We had a big argument that resulted in my username being added to the Loser List (I saw that one coming). I went to the message board again, checked a few posts, and then a new one popped up from somebody saying they’d h@cked the Loser List! I went back to the Loser List, and I nearly fell out of my computer chair. Through every category of the list were the alternating names “mari_jhane” and “lindsayg” (her other account)! That would have to qualify as one of my top 10 favorite Neopets moments. But it didn’t last long, because Mari_Jhane deleted it, however I informed Trekker before that, and she got a copy, however the copy didn’t work because of the site’s frames, and instead there was a little message by MJ that said something like “trekker13 and all her pals will soon be destroyed. muhahaha.” I’m not kidding; it actually said that.

Mischievous as I was, at that time, I decided to make an anti-Mari_Jhane site of my own called “Club Mari_Jhane” (the motto was “It’s not just our name…It’s a suggestion!”). I posted the URL on her guestbook. When I found out that my guestbook post had been deleted, I immediately scrapped Club Mari_Jhane and went to the NeoChats, where, yeah, there was Mari_Jhane, and boy was she mad. She blamed me for h@cking her Loser List (which I didn’t, but try explaining that to her). In retaliation, I posted a couple messages slandering MJ, which prompted a user named MistressFaerie telling me to stop.

I told MistressFaerie that I wasn’t going to listen to any one of Mari_Jhane’s flunkies (like Dkstriker). She replied that she wasn’t an MJ flunkie…she was a monitor (D’OH!). I checked her look-up and she definitely was a monitor.

At the same time, I got a neomessage from someone named smfan67. Smfan67 told me Mari_Jhane had sent them a virus, and they gave me the URL for the “virus.” I immediately told MistressFaerie, who said that viruses couldn’t have URLs, but she would check into it. After that she said it was just a hit counter that took IP addresses. Huh?

After talking to Trekker, I figured out that she had also got the same message from smfan67. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that smfan67 was Mari_Jhane, and she wanted our IP addresses. I wisely didn’t go to it, though. It was then that I told MistressFaerie all about Mari_Jhane, the Loser List, Trekker’s petition, everything…and MistressFaerie said that if she got proof MJ was a scammer, then she could freeze her! I asked MistressFaerie to ask Trekker for proof. I had sincere hopes that MistressFaerie could do something about this. It was getting late then. What a day!

About a week went by. I kept asking MistressFaerie if she’d gotten enough proof yet, and she kept telling me she was working on it. Meanwhile, Mari_Jhane was still there. She often was frozen, but for some reason, she was always unfrozen. I wondered why. Eventually, MistressFaerie stopped replying to my messages. I knew she was still around, because I saw her at the chats, but she was obviously ignoring me. What was the deal?

One day, I ran into Mari_Jhane in the chats, and we had a HUGE argument with my fellow regs vs. her and her supporters. This time, we had much more to fight about. She accused me of being a middle-aged man from Massachussetts (which was hilarious, but totally wrong…I was a 13-year-old girl from Texas), because that’s what her little IP thing got. We went on to about 50 replies to the topic just flaming one another. After that, I logged off. When I logged back on, I discovered that my account was frozen. I’d have to say I was appalled, but I wasn’t the type to just give up like that. I created a new account and began neomailing frozen@neopets.com. Felicity replied telling me that I’d been frozen for harrassment, and the monitor who froze me was MistressFaerie.

That time, actually did fall out of my computer chair. MISTRESSFAERIE?!! I felt like giving that filthy traitor the biggest flaming of her life, but I got ahold of myself. I needed my account back, and that wasn’t going to help. I continued e-mailing Neopets and mailed different addresses of the site.

Meanwhile, Mari_Jhane instant messaged me via AIM leaving just a smiley face emoticon, after she figured out I’d been frozen. I was understandably furious. I also got into AIM “discussions” (arguments) with MJ, Dkstriker, and the others, which didn’t do any good. Around this time, Trekker13 was also frozen, but not for the same reason. She was sick of seeing theme parks abused to reveal cheats, so she created a page of Neopets cheats. Her motives were good, but she was still frozen. She created a new account.

Finally, Iris unfroze my account. She messed up a few times trying to unfreeze it, but I can’t really blame her since she practically saved my pets, right? When I got back into my account (a week had passed), I was ecstatic. I felt like throwing a party. I told Trekker to try Iris, because she helped me. Checking out MistressFaerie’s shop, I found a link to Mari_Jhane’s shop. My suspicions were confirmed: MistressFaerie and Mari_Jhane were now friends (they’re about the same age, 19, so it seemed reasonable…well maybe “reasonable” isn’t the word…I mean, a monitor befriending a scammer?!).

My account was back, but I still had unfinished business. Now, I felt responsible for MistressFaerie befriending the most notorious scammer in Neopia, and now I suspected that SHE was the one that was continuously unfreezing her. My friend from school also told me she got messages from MistressFaerie interrogating her because she was on my neofriends list! But I had to lay low. I realized that MistressFaerie might not have known that I knew she froze me, and I wanted to keep it that way. If she thought I was frozen, she wouldn’t bother to try freezing me again.

…Unfortunately, that didn’t work. I was discovered and frozen once again. I tried to e-mail Neopets, but Felicity told me that my account was “locked” (whatever that means), and the monitor who froze me (obviously MistressFaerie) did NOT want me unfrozen. For whatever reason, the monitor wanted to get rid of me for good.

It soon was becoming clear to me that I was never going to see my pets, Salei, Troby, and Zarri again. Unless I made one last decision, and it really was my last resort. I created a new account called chromefox and begged MistressFaerie to help me (I didn’t mention who froze me, so I don’t think she thought I knew). She told me that she couldn’t unfreeze the account (sure), but she could send my pets and neopoints to chromefox. I quickly agreed and, truthfully, told her I had 30,000 NP (come to think of it, I should’ve lied and asked for more). She followed through, and I never spoke to her again.

I’ll never know why MistressFaerie chose to help me. Maybe she felt guilty for what she’d done, but regardless, I still held a tremendous amount of spite against her.

From that day on, I continued to fight by e-mailing the Neopets Staff about Mari_Jhane’s crimes. They always denied it and demanded proof. Many, many others fought to ban Mari_Jhane — I was definitely not alone. But it never worked. No matter how much proof we gave them, they’d just deny, deny, deny. It was obvious something fishy was going on when Adam and Donna replied to my e-mails that our case against MJ was “rubbish” and that she was “very helpful” to them. They also mentioned she was an Alpha Tester. From several different sources, I found out that she Alpha Tested the Battledome. Mari_Jhane was a favorite of the Neopets Staff.

Trekker finally told me the original reason why she was on MJ’s Loser List: A neofriend wanted her to make a get-rid-of-MJ site for them (Ban Mari_Jhane), so she did, and that’s what happened.

I encountered a number of others like me, and nearly all of them were frozen. One named Judy explained that she was a former monitor, and Mari_Jhane tricked her son out of giving her the password to the monitor database (or whatever), where she posted messages that the Staff thought were from Judy, which made Judy lose her position. I don’t know if this story was true, but Judy was eventually frozen. She still remains on my neofriends list.

MistressFaerie was eventually fired, and I’m not sure why. Shortly after, Mari_Jhane was frozen for good, not by the actions of the people against her, but because of a stupid mistake she made. She gave out the AOL Instant Messenger screen names of the Neopets Staff members to a h@cker named Puppetz. When Adam found out, they decided to freeze her. She hasn’t returned to Neopia since. On her site, she admited that she had scammed but still asked for support.

Trekker and I went our separate ways. She is now an avid contributor to the Neopian Times (from her new account). I wish her well.

As for me…I’m happy being ChromeFox now. I still have my pets, and I have more NP and items and neofriends than I ever had as ShadowFox123. Do I have any regrets? No. As much as this “Mari_Jhane Saga” put me through, it has changed me for the better.

-CONCLUSION-

One of the most interesting things about my experience is that it blew everything I thought before out of the water. A popular, Hrobi-esque aristocrat was a scammer, a monitor was a traitor, and the Neopets Staff sided with a scammer — possibly knowingly — and froze everyone who tried to inform others. If there’s anything this can teach others it’s that things are not always what they seem to be.

I will never forgive Adam or Donna for what they did. It seems possible that some Staff members were against Mari_Jhane, but Adam and Donna were the ones who sided with her, for whatever reason. I know I survived (sort of) this whole ordeal, but what about Judy? What about cyber_blades, and all the others? They’re gone now because of a stupid mistake the Neopets Staff made. It took her conniving with a known h@cker to get them to realize who they were keeping in Neopia.

I’ll also never trust another monitor ever again. I’ve tried, but whenever I hear the word “monitor,” I always think of the one person who nearly separated me from my pets for good. True, she did send my pets and money to my new account, but that’s like beating the crap out of somebody and then rushing them to the hospital!

Do I think something like this will ever happen again? Probably not. I think (and hope) the Staff has learned their lesson. I think one of the reasons they cut back monitor power was because of MistressFaerie. And now, scamming is much easier to detect, so I think another Mari_Jhane wouldn’t last.

In conclusion, I’ve learned a lot through this, and I hope you did reading it. If you have any anecdotes or information or anything, feel free to neomail me. Thanks. – ChromeFox