, this is a topic at the time of the event that proves this did happen

Ok so I’ve been wondering this for a while but does anyone know anything about that one recent scratch April fools day where a lot of users reported receiving the message that they were being followed by famous scratcher Griffpatch? If this event was real I don’t remember if it was reported that scratch team made an announcement about it and I don’t believe there was a wiki page made.

I do remember a couple more things about the event.

1, a few days or weeks after the event the username on the message changed. Upon originally receiving the message it said Griffpatch followed you and it linked to griffpatches page, but after the message change it linked to a banned user

2, on topics made about it a few people who didn’t receive the message thought that it was fake (this is likely the reason they never made a page on it on the scratch wiki (or they just want to hide any potential of major troll events)).

Was this a thing meant to be for April fools day or was this a troll prank? Does anyone have any information on the event

Amazingfish8 wrote:

(#1)
I am only making this topic due to a topic I have recently seen about horror style scratch hyjaking video

What does griffpatch have to do with scary video that reminds me of something traumatising that traumatises me

I never got the message what year was it I might have not been on scratch when it happened and I didn't make an account yet.

scratchy_boy106 wrote:

Amazingfish8 wrote:

(#1)
I am only making this topic due to a topic I have recently seen about horror style scratch hyjaking video

What does griffpatch have to do with scary video that reminds me of something traumatising that traumatises me

Well I don’t believe the message was ever said to be apart of the April fools day by scratch team aswell as the fact the name in the message changed to some random banned account which I find strange if it was done by scratch team.

scratchy_boy106 wrote:

I never got the message what year was it I might have not been on scratch when it happened and I didn't make an account yet.

I believe it might have been between I think 2021-2025 it may have been 2023 or 2024 because I remember when the event happened I was on grifftopia at the time

I remember this! I think it was definitely 2025 as I was on the forums at that time and I think it was a glitch or a troll attack where it would show a famous scratcher (I think ceebee was also one of the people that would show?) and it ended up being an unofficial April fools joke

Scratch_Cat_Coder8 wrote:

I remember this! I think it was definitely 2025 as I was on the forums at that time and I think it was a glitch or a troll attack where it would show a famous scratcher (I think ceebee was also one of the people that would show?) and it ended up being an unofficial April fools joke

1,Do you have any screenshots or sources of the event? (I’m going to be like an conspiracist and make a project explaining all the knowledge of the event)

2, I never knew that there was more fake names involved with the event so that is really important to note

3, Yk this should be troll stuff that the scratch wiki talk about this is one of the more wholesome things I’ve seen trolls do

Amazingfish8 wrote:

Scratch_Cat_Coder8 wrote:

I remember this! I think it was definitely 2025 as I was on the forums at that time and I think it was a glitch or a troll attack where it would show a famous scratcher (I think ceebee was also one of the people that would show?) and it ended up being an unofficial April fools joke

1,Do you have any screenshots or sources of the event? (I’m going to be like an conspiracist and make a project explaining all the knowledge of the event)

2, I never knew that there was more fake names involved with the event so that is really important to note

3, Yk this should be troll stuff that the scratch wiki talk about this is one of the more wholesome things I’ve seen trolls do

https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/814772/?page=1#post-8480168 I think the ceebee one may be a Mandela effect I have I’ll have to check edit: yeah it’s a Mandela effect, can’t find anything sorry for the false alarm

Scratch_Cat_Coder8 wrote:

https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/814772/?page=1#post-8480168 I think the ceebee one may be a Mandela effect I have I’ll have to check edit: yeah it’s a Mandela effect, can’t find anything sorry for the false alarm

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

from this topic we’ve gotten screen shots and multiple videos (we also have posts of people claiming the event wasn’t real).

So we can verify the event was real.

What we now know about the event

The Griffpatch following event took place on April fools day 2025 where (as we currently know of) 396 people received the message the message of which being of Griffpatch is following you. This message would then be altered to likely have the username of the troll who did this being a banned account called attentionseeker009. We can also tell from the topic a previous person on this topic linked (thank you) that this event was not caused by a browser extension (another piece of evidence that this wasn’t caused by any scratch extension mods is that the account is following ME and I swear on my soul that on this account I do not have any extensions yet I also received the Griffpatch is following you message. Due to the low amount of people their following it can also be possible that when they weren’t banned yet they were manually following people. We have no idea how this user got their following notifications to say they were Griffpatch as apparently they are not a scratch team member so this is potential an outside force. Anything thing is that this isn’t the only attention seeker account as funny enough we have an unbanned account that shares a similar name to the name of which the message changed to aswell as that if we look at their join date it was 1 year and 3 months ago, that date is April 2025 right around the date of April fools 2025. We also know that this event was not covered on the scratch wiki April fools page likely due to 1, it being considered a hoax which can be proven false and 2, it not being of ST action. I’ve also check who is following this account and there’s one person following the 009 account though I’ve done a search and allegedly that person has been banned so we can’t find out if their behind it or not
Edit 1: according to this trusted forumer, the user who did caused the event possibly used a bug/glitch trying to register an account by the name of “griffpatch/n” and /n represented a new line character. This is how they got the name Griffpatch when following people. ST then changed the name of the account which explains why it is now called “attentionseeker009”

Why did you post this because of scary topic its not related

scratchy_boy106 wrote:

Why did you post this because of scary topic its not related

The scary topic you’re talking about was about hyjakings on scratch. Hyjakings make me think of people taking control of stuff when they’re not suppose to. The Griffpatch following event was likely not done by ST and was of someone changing the way notifications work so that their username isn’t their own and it links to someone else. That Is why I said I made this topic because it reminded me of the event

Current questions

1, WHO did this?
2, HOW did they do this?
3, WHY did they do this?
4, CAN it be done again?
5, IS there any more proof of this events existence?
6, IS there anymore events similar to this that are lesser known?

Horror topic got dustbinned!

Bump

well i have seen my fairshare of hackers and i suppose the hackers acc has already been deleted

TheTADCnerd13 wrote:

well i have seen my fairshare of hackers and i suppose the hackers acc has already been deleted

That would make sense but (to my knowledge because there’s no actual wiki that covers scratch hacking events) this seems like a strange hacking occurrence.

A exploit allowing the hacker’s name to appear as a famous scratch and then link to that scratcher but then weeks later both the name and name link changed back to the account which was likely used. Another reason why I want to investigate this is because it was done by a hacker, most scratch “hackers” are very malicious trolls who would’ve probably changed the username to something highly inappropriate so judging by that this event seems really strange and oddly wholesome compared to other trolls actions

Edit:

Whilst the account used by the troll is banned it could be likely this troll goes by a “troll name” (from my experience in grifftopia, trolls would always go by names they would promote in a lot of their spam comment raids)

but personally I don’t think this could be a troll, as previously stated trolls likely would’ve done something malicious instead of just making their name link to and appear as griffpatch. I think it’s likely that this was a scratcher who figured out this exploit and used it

Amazingfish8 wrote:

TheTADCnerd13 wrote:

well i have seen my fairshare of hackers and i suppose the hackers acc has already been deleted

That would make sense but (to my knowledge because there’s no actual wiki that covers scratch hacking events) this seems like a strange hacking occurrence.

A exploit allowing the hacker’s name to appear as a famous scratch and then link to that scratcher but then weeks later both the name and name link changed back to the account which was likely used. Another reason why I want to investigate this is because it was done by a hacker, most scratch “hackers” are very malicious trolls who would’ve probably changed the username to something highly inappropriate so judging by that this event seems really strange and oddly wholesome compared to other trolls actions

Maybe it was a silly hacker dude trying to get a laugh by trolling millions of lil kids (shrug)

TheTADCnerd13 wrote:

[
Maybe it was a silly hacker dude trying to get a laugh by trolling millions of lil kids (shrug)

It was 396 people effected, as previously stated in the (what we know) post I made I theorised that the following was done manually (which could further prove it was done by a regular scratcher)

I do agree with this though as through my investigation it seems like there was a regular scratcher who was following attentionseeker009 (the account used in the event). The scratcher has basically vanished off scratch and I don’t know how to reach them to ask if it was them though, but I have attempted to reach out to scratchers who seemed to be friends with that user

Bump

someone used a bug to register the username “griffpatch\n” where \n represents a new line character (ie. what you get when you press the enter or return key). this looks identical to “griffpatch”, and i think links to it actually go to griffpatch too. they then went around following a bunch of people around the site.

the scratch team later banned the fake accounts and changed their usernames.

as an aside, we tried to fix this bug by ‘trimming’ usernames when you register an account (removing whitespace from the ends of the name), but this came after the length check, so the name “12\n” would count as 3 characters, but get trimmed to “12”, and allow people to register 2 character names. that’s why there was suddenly an influx of new 2 character long usernames around this time.