how did you learn of smogon and why did you join

i joined because zombachu told me and i needed help with my battling

I found out about Smogon when somebody said something about tiers in pokemon. After some searching here I got here. I joined because I wanted to increase my battling skills to greater levels...and make some buds along the way.

When you search any pokemon's name (before b/w and besides Pikachu) Smogon's entry is number 3 or 4.

Well a friend told me about the strategy dex so after reading a lot of that I saw the forums and I wanted to rate some teams so I then joined.

I was already reading a ton of their 5th gen analyses, and I thought what the hell xD

I was doing some research on Bulbapedia, when I eventually came across info on past world championships. Being the Eeveelution maniac that I was, my eyes lit up when I saw that someone had one in TCG with an Eeveelution based team. I then decided that my dream of winning world championship with an Eeveelution-based team wasn't so far-fetched. I knew that some moves (and cards for the TCG) were not allowed, so I did a couple Google searches. When Play! Pokemon didn't provide all the info, I did a little more searching. Eventually, I came across Smogon's clauses (such as the Sleep Clause, etc). I did some exploring of the site to see if it was linked to Nintendo in any way. I was disappointed that it wasn't, but I was overwhelmed with the massive amounts of Pokemon information that was here. I read articles for months, researched my favorite pokemon and their threats, then read about other stuff. I eventually found the page describing the tutoring program. While I was late for the sign-ups, I still made an account, hoping to become a better competitive battler.