Entity #016 - The Horticulturaliste Phenomenon
Description
Entity Surname: The Horticulturaliste Phenomenon
Entity Type: Event
Risk: 3 - Hazardous
Status: Removed
Entity #016 was a mostly undocumented anomalous incident in Roblox history that occurred on January 9th, 2014. The #016 incident had affected roughly 300,000 or more accounts. The accounts affected would have all or most of their items wiped, have their bio changed to “The Curse Of Horticulturaliste will be upon you unless you repost the story to three other threads,” have their username changed to “horticulturaliste,” and have their avatar changed to a grey and white Robloxian wearing the “Ludicrous Floppy Hat With Unreasonably Large Bow” accessory regardless if they owned it or not, essentially becoming exact copies of the #016-B account.
Roughly thirteen minutes after the incident occurred, most accounts were terminated, with some reverting back to their original state, though according to affected users who had their accounts reverted back, they could not log in or access their accounts in any way.
Entity #016-B - horticulturaliste
Entity Type: Account
Status: Active
Risk: 0 - Safe
#016-B is a series of accounts connected to the #016 event. The #016 event's cause is still unknown, as is the owner of the accounts, so the validity of #016-B being an anomaly is still in doubt. As mentioned previously, each of these accounts looked exactly the same, with each being a grey and white Robloxian with the “Ludicrous Floppy Hat With Unreasonably Large Bow” equipped.
Currently there is no plausible correlation between the #016-B account name “horticulturaliste” (another more scientific way of saying gardener, except with an added “e”) and the incident, aside from the identical usernames and avatars and descriptions.
There is not much documented evidence of this incident apart from a few photos and a now-deleted video. The primary reason for this is because of the time of the incident and how quickly it was reverted, and because of this, much of what we have documented has been recovered through stories and accounts from players on the forum.
The relation between the original horticulturaliste account and the #016 event, aside from the avatar, bio, and username, is unknown. During the incident, the original account was banned. Whether this is because the owner of the account incited the event or because it was misidentified for looking like all of the affected accounts at the same time is unknown.
Interestingly, even after the original account was terminated, subsequent accounts of the same name and appearance have appeared almost every year around the anniversary of the event, yet Roblox administration still, for unknown reasons, terminates the accounts every year when they pop up.
| Entity Profile | |
|---|---|
A photo posted on a Roblox forum website posted by {Content Hidden}
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| A mass account manipulation incident across Roblox | |
| Type | Event |
| Status | Removed |
| Risk | 3 - Hazardous |
Addendum
Among RA staff, there is a popular theory about the #016-B account. This theory states that a group of hackers managed to find/create an exploit through unknown means within the Roblox client and use that exploit to morph/edit accounts into appearing like the #016-B account. This theory does hold some value because of forum posts made by three affected users complaining about issues regarding an unidentified hacker group. The forum posts could have been unrelated to the incident. While there is not much proof for this theory other than the forum posts, it still holds its place as a highly regarded theory in the ranks of RA.
The #016 incident was covered up by the Roblox Corporation for unknown reasons, as stated by former Roblox administrator “AcesWayUpHigh” on a now deleted forum post: “Greetings! Yesterday, a major ban wave occurred, affecting many users. If you believe you were terminated unfairly, please contact Roblox.”
When asked about this incident by user {Content Hidden} around four months after the original post’s creation, AcesWayUpHigh denied the post’s existence and said that nothing happened. The reason for the #016 event coverup remains unknown.
The #016 incident had become a minor urban legend in the Roblox Talk subforum in 2015. Talk of the #016 event was revived by user {Content Hidden}, who had posted a story of how their account was transformed and banned. This spawned a copypasta, which was a copy of the bio of affected users stating that “The Curse Of Horticulturaliste will be upon you unless you repost the story to three other threads.” Around the end of 2015, talk of the #016 incident had fully died down, and in the following weeks the copypasta was shared less and less.