How I 1st started playing Pokémon:
Man, it's been so long ago that I can't quite recall enough of the details. All I know is that I played Pokémon Red, Blue, AND Yellow, and I also played Pokémon Stadium (which taught me how noobish I was at 1st before I started playing that game). I didn't play Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal, but I did get to sample how the game has evolved since I last played Pokémon Stadium by playing its sequal, Pokémon Stadium 2. However, I only rented the game, but I did learn a few new things that would help me out in the later generations.
I later played Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, though I never completed either game, as my interest in the series tended to die down rather quickly due to a lack of local competition. However, I did complete my copy of Fire Red, but again, I didn't have much interest in the series. I also played Pokémon Colosseum (though I've yet to gain enough interest to complete the game) and a bit of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness as well (though I only completed all of the battle sim challenges on my brother's file).
When Pokémon Diamond and Pearl came out, my interest in the series was fueled so much by the fact that you could play on Wi-Fi that I got my copy of Pokémon Diamond (while my brother got a copy of Pokémon Pearl), though I again lost interest in the game. However, when Pokémon Battle Revolution came out with the possibility of battling against all sorts of random players, I finally gained enough interest in the series that I completed my copy of Pokémon Diamond, bought a copy of PBR for the Nintendo Wii, and started doing some research on all sorts of things before I decided on how I would design my teams.
How I found out about Smogon.
Not long before I 1st got my copy of Pokémon Diamond, I started to dive into the realm of online chatting for the 1st time in my life (which was a little more than a year ago), so I might still be a bit new to this. Anyways, I 1st heard about PBR from a forum friend of mine from another forum that I visit often. She owned a copy of the game, and posted some videos of her battles onto YouTube, which eventually got me interested in getting PBR for myself in the process. (Her username on YouTube is "Overhazard" in case anyone was curious.)
While I was planning on how my team would be designed, I searched a number of sites that would help me out in terms of deciding how I'd design my team. Some sites that I frequently visited for those purposes included
www.legendarypokemon.net, veekun.com, and, of course, Smogon.
I had heard about Smogon University from a variety of posts that I read on YouTube. I might've also heard about this site from Bulbapedia as well. Eventually, I decided to check it out. At 1st, I only wanted to check out the "Strategy Pokédex's" entries to a variety of Pokémon and see what Smogon thinks about those Pokémon, though at times, I was usually somewhat disappointed with the selection of popular strategies and the lack of strategies that I myself liked to use.
Later on, I decided to check out the forums as well. One such section of the forums (the "rate-my-team" section) caught my eye and was a motivating factor for me to join and try to submit my own team's designs and see what the rest of you guys might think about my team.