that one internet friend you played fifa 14 with on xbox and formed a tight bond with but then disappeared out of nowhere

[zee]

i havent used smogoff in forever and I found out I am the imposter has announced their retirement. real sad tbh I liked the kid. feel free to share your experiences with realizing your dear internet friends one day "logged off" "hit x" "sent Post" etc. only to never return.

rest in power.


by the way what the FUCK happened while I was gone this forum's literally all just either effort posting or 14 year olds spamming pc++ threads to qualify for national dex pu tutoring

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

when I was relatively new to PS (at that time, my username wasn't Ryota Mitarai), I used to do some sort of a "Gym Challenge" on the AG Ladder and I'd offer whoever beat the opportunity to beat the other "seven" Gym Leaders (which were me again). I met someone on the ladder and we started chatting and so on, basically we bonded for a bit. One day, he stopped logging, but at one point logged in with a different username to tell me he had forgotten his password. And from then on, he never logged in again, to my knowledge.

 

[Plague von Karma]

I remember some blokes - none of their names, though - who ran some Pokemon League on PS. I think it was called the Shiny League and they had a Larvitar banner. They had their own PS server too. I believe this was when XY had just come out, but I'm not certain. I just remember using BW sprites at the time...

I ended up being their Rock Gym Leader for a long time, dabbling in Steel and Ice when they didn't have people to deal with those too. Steel was also the point where I started experimenting with my internet identity, but that's another story. For some reason I used to win ridiculously often. I was also a mod on the PS server which is basically the equivalent of overseeing a nursery at age 13-14.

I actually found the old PS account here, reminds me that we used the Spade symbol to signify we were in the league like some weird mafiosos.
https://pokemonshowdown.com/users/Gymlederbrock

I think I remember one person had accused me of being a monotype mainer's alt, as I'd win so much and had such a similar playstyle. Sorry mate, 13 year old me was just a clairvoyant.

But anyway, I essentially did the Xbox Live CoD friend thing to them and never logged on again one day, not sure why. I checked back once and the server was gone. Something tells me this was around the time my Dell Latitude broke.

I don't remember any of the people's names these days but man, would it be cool to meet those folks again. They were pretty nice!

 

[aerobee]

I started playing Custom Game when I was relatively new to PS, around early 2018; at the time I think I challenged random people, something that I'm a little embarrassed about having done.

After a while I became bored of fighting randoms and started going deeper into the metagame, meeting new people along the way. Eventually I discovered that there was a decently large community of Custom Game players, many of which were really experienced (and often won against me).
I think I regularly battled them for around six months.

I took a break from the end of 2018 to around the fall of 2019, and when I returned I discovered that the vast majority of people I encountered (understandably) stopped playing the format. Fortunately I was able to keep in touch with many of these players, but a good number of them just stopped logging onto PS, to my knowledge.

 

[monkfish]

i have posted about the MSN gaming zone "ZWC" (zone wide chat) before. this was my first online chat experience. strange to think that it was closed down only a year before the launch of smogon, it feels like a completely different era. i remember NaughtyXtreme (leader of the Naughty clan), WICKEDNYGHTMARE (leader of the WICKED clan), LEADEROFDAPAC (leader of 'da pac' clan) among others. my username back then, aged 11, was BraveDarktruth, and upon joining 'da pac' clan i was dubbed BRAVESTOFDAPAC. unfortunately some cruel chat members decided to capitalise this as BraVestOfDaPac and i became known simply as 'bra'. when i left 'da pac' i leaned into the nickname and became known as BraVestAndSocks, and eventually, just __SOCKS__.

my clearest memory of that chat room was talking about 9/11 on the day it happened

 

[Yung Dramps]

>fifa

granted this is before the series became an ecasino but still, reference an actual videogame next time

 

[toaster04]

when I was relatively new to PS (at that time, my username wasn't Ryota Mitarai), I used to do some sort of a "Gym Challenge" on the AG Ladder and I'd offer whoever beat the opportunity to beat the other "seven" Gym Leaders (which were me again). I met someone on the ladder and we started chatting and so on, basically we bonded for a bit. One day, he stopped logging, but at one point logged in with a different username to tell me he had forgotten his password. And from then on, he never logged in again, to my knowledge.

man this thread hits hard

echoing this post, i had the exact same experience which was sometime around late 2020 or early 2021 with this vague Pluto dude i forgot the name of. fought them on the bw ou ladder and they were at the 1000s and won somehow, they offered to challenge me to gym leader battles which was the only topic in our pms.

we usually did battles for 1-2 hours listed in all gens ou formats (which varied based off of a form of generations) and on rare occassions natdex ag



afterwards, they disappeared in 2021 and havent seen them online since. he was a cool dude too

 

[Clone]

Back when battlefield 3 was the current game, I think early 2012, I was looking for people to play with and eventually ended up joining a clan, anonymous exiles. 15 year old me thought I was hot shit back then with my 2.13 k/d and wanted to play competitive. We played a few games against other clans here and there but really it was just a group to play with. Some of us stuck together through battlefield 4/1, but after that most of the guys stopped playing. A couple of them I was really cool with, and still check their psns to see if they've logged in recently, but alas they haven't.

I was able to reconnect with a few when fortnite was popular and would play with them in squads, but that was short lived. With 2042 coming out I'm hoping to squad up again with those that come back but we'll see

 

[phoopes]

two people come to mind:

this dude on Serebii from when I joined a clan there, I don't even remember anything specific about him, just that he was really cool. RIP. Maybe Redew remembers him (this is also the kind of thread I think you would like anyway)

also a lot of my pals from Pokemon Lab but especially Pizza Fish. I revived our friendship via email once but even that was many years ago at this point. I wonder what's happened to him

 

[faint]

>fifa

granted this is before the series became an ecasino but still, reference an actual videogame next time

lol this is so true Gamer

 

[Arcticblast]

back when I was in high school (shortly after I joined Smogon actually), one of my IRL friends and I started using a metal music website called AllMetalForums

we used it on and off until the site shut down in 2012 I think? the owner of the site probably just didn't feel like paying for it any more

there were a couple people on there who were pretty cool, but being an extreme metal community, it also had some real shitters. like literal Nazis etc. in hindsight we probably should never have joined. I think I found one person on Smogon who had an AMF account but that was way back in the vBulletin days so idk

EDIT: god this made me go way back in time and look at my oldest PMs and VMs, there's a couple names in there that I remember really liking

 

[HSOWA]

almost all my old friends on PurpleSurge IRC back when I was like 12/13 :(

This post would be an essay if I talk about all of them but the best friend I remember was this guy named Nintymaster, we were both British and around the same age, we used to chat everyday until one day in 2008-09ish he disappeared, apparently had internet issues. Haven't been able to find him ever since.

Some friends from PO too, come back Annoying Orange and Hassin627

 

[doipy hooves]

I used to be active on some side servers almost 10 years ago (tbt / oriserver) as my first real chat experience (other than a forum chatbox) and I don't really know if anyone from there is still around, though maybe it's been too long and I didn't really talk to anyone outside of it either, even an IRL friend on there stopped going to the same school. Every day I would log on and mostly lurk or talk about what I was playing until I had to get off the computer. To be honest I was probably on the other side of this thread most of the time, since sometimes I just left for a while after a faux pas because I was young and self conscious. Looking back I regret many things like being annoying, making this username, and abusing power, but in hindsight I'm glad I made my mistakes early on in a relatively chill community and it was good to learn from, though I'm probably still self conscious about it.

 

[AM]

I was that guy right Cynde Eyan MrAldo ?

 

[Rabia]

when I first started on PO in 2011 there was a server called Shoda Region and I remember like one guy from there named Gym Leader Enfu that was pretty chill, think he may have held auth in some variant of TA in the past too

there was also Sky Colosseum and Zac Flare was pretty chill, actually had him contact me a few years ago and we caught up a little bit over NBA-related stuff

some other server I remember being active on too but can't remember the name? just remember someone that went by Paladin

 

[Plague von Karma]

Ah fuck another one came to mind

So back when I was a Facebook junkie I was in a Smash 4 DLC speculation group. To say nothing else, I was a nutter back then and would pull some crazy stunts. Lots of regrets there but hey, moved on.

I met one guy there called Danny; me and him would become fast friends as fellow Ridley/K. Rool Revolutionaries™. We'd talk about a lot of stuff and go on to form a little shitposting brigade in the Fire Emblem community. He was an interesting bloke and really fun to play around with, lots of cool takes on various gaming topics that kind of formed how I view the industry nowadays. Unfortunately, he eventually went down the alt right pipeline during 2015-2016. I got sucked in a bit too, but pulled myself out when I realised what I was doing to myself.

Soon enough, we lost touch, and I haven't seen him on Facebook since. I tried to catch up with him on Discord last year to see how he is but nothing really worked. From what I heard he well and truly went down that road, so I'm kinda worried ngl.

 

[emma]

shrop

 

[Berks]

SilentMango and I got close playing Little Cup and chatting on PS. He and I had some minor breakout performances in LC tournaments around the same time, but he ended up doing better than me. When I left Smogon for a couple years back at the end of 2017, he was a solid player… cut back to 2019, when I got back, and he was gone.

His last post is a scheduling post for a tourney game with Heysup, so I can only assume Heysup killed him

 

[Martin]

>fifa

granted this is before the series became an ecasino but still, reference an actual videogame next time

 

[churine]

im that guy. theres countless names on smogon and ps i remember talking to lots that have randomly disappeared within 8 or so years for me but as far as ps goes, i just remember one day not going on showdown for social aspects at all. i think this is a combination of discord existing in a similar vein to irc and being a lot more fun, esp since (no offense) ps mods tend to have sticks up their asses, and id just rather play other games. nowadays i only go on on main to test teams at random, i still lurk smogtour games from time to time but i dont even use a single identifiable alt anymore so i dont talk there. basically the epitome of discord main here.

 

[Paulluxx]

i havent used smogoff in forever and I found out I am the imposter has announced their retirement. real sad tbh I liked the kid. feel free to share your experiences with realizing your dear internet friends one day "logged off" "hit x" "sent Post" etc. only to never return.

View attachment 360609

rest in power.


by the way what the FUCK happened while I was gone this forum's literally all just either effort posting or 14 year olds spamming pc++ threads to qualify for national dex pu tutoring

lol, imps back.

 

[GoodMorningEspeon]

I used to be active on some side servers almost 10 years ago (tbt / oriserver) as my first real chat experience (other than a forum chatbox) and I don't really know if anyone from there is still around, though maybe it's been too long and I didn't really talk to anyone outside of it either, even an IRL friend on there stopped going to the same school. Every day I would log on and mostly lurk or talk about what I was playing until I had to get off the computer. To be honest I was probably on the other side of this thread most of the time, since sometimes I just left for a while after a faux pas because I was young and self conscious. Looking back I regret many things like being annoying, making this username, and abusing power, but in hindsight I'm glad I made my mistakes early on in a relatively chill community and it was good to learn from, though I'm probably still self conscious about it.

wait this is actually kind of wild

if i recall correctly and you're Derpy Flametix, i 100% remember you from battle tower, my old username was aaf. i have super vivid memories of doing a pokemon crystal nuzlocke with you and iPad and then battling on showdown with our in-game teams. i haven't been active on PS/smogon for ages and just occasionally check random forum threads when i get bored so the fact that i'm even seeing this is a stroke of luck!

i was maybe 12 or 13 years old at the time so i was incredibly immature and dumb but nearly 10 years later and i still remember the good times we had. thanks for the memories i guess :)

btw there is an incredibly dead discord server with a handful of the people from TBT that i'm in, i get a notification from there maybe once a year lol. DM me on discord sometime! GME#7981

 

[Zantropez]

You'd think YouTube comment sections are unlikely places to find great friends, but back in 2014 I found someone with a favorite Pokémon in common with me. I replied to their comment, desperate for more friends, and we ended up having long conversations that at some point stopped being about the subject video the comments section was for. We'd then chase each other around YouTube, finding each other in comment sections for other Pokémon-themed videos and hell even some related to Mario or Sonic. We'd do this for well over a year, he was super awesome and talking with him was the highlight of my life at the time.

One day he randomly disappeared on me, I don't know exactly when but he was a really cool dude and I'd love to see him again. Most YouTube comment sections are cesspools of generic or angry comments and I don't think lightning would strike twice if I talked to anyone else in one of them lol. I've got plenty of friends now from a different place, so I'm not too grief-stricken, but losing special friends like that always sucks

 

[Durant]

I used to have an online friend on an mmorpg I used to play around 2014-2015 (Flyff for those interested). Frequently chatted with him for a few months when he one day got an adorable husky puppy. When we were playing one day he said that his husky just slipped through a crack in his garden fence and that he was gonna go afk to look for it. I’ve never seen him online in game or on skype ever since then.

 

[HydrogenHydreigon]

Ah, I was probably that person. Used to play on PS a lot when I was younger- at one point, though, I forgot my password so I created a new account, and at around the same time, my interest in Pokemon started waning; I stopped using PS too often shortly after.