when I joined, I was traumatized by an early posting experience that saw me get roasted for accidentally posting misinformation
anyone worth their salt gets over stuff like that quickly but this experience really stuck with me
I waited and watched for about a year before posting again. I decided I would only post when I could be useful, contributing artwork to projects
Over that year I would sometimes post in situations that I felt completely confident I was helping a thread or adding something to it, but these were very few in number
Although I would visit the site daily, I did not post for another two years, when I started contributing artwork to the site's official tournaments. I did so almost entirely through private messages. I discovered I no longer needed to post at all. I purposefully had other people put my work up in the appropriate forums so that I wouldn't have to
In early 2011, the praises to my name made me feel better about posting more, and strange things started happening: I started to make friends. What had for many years been a solitary experience was now a social one. The act of visiting the forums became more meaningful; I felt like a welcomed community member. Smogon became more than an inbox full of requests.
I share this because my being reclusive for so long remains a large regret of mine. Many new posters make the mistake of posting excessively without an understanding of the culture of the site or its sub-communities. The community does not hesitate to punish or ridicule them. However, I know I am not the only one who instead did the reverse and stayed distant and silent for much longer than I should have
If you're out there reading this and this sounds like you, I encourage you to speak up more in places you care about or find interesting. Even if you end up making a fool of yourself, these things are only as permanent as you let them be.
thanks for reading
