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General What brought you to Smogon?

a long time ago i had a serebii account. i took a long break, came back with a sudden passion for competitive battling, then came to the conclusion that i either hated most of the users there simply by reading their posts or thought they were unbelievably stupid. there was some post about serebii vs smogon so i decided to check out this apparently 'inferior' website. i lurked for a bit, made friends, and i got hooked af so here i am

i went back recently and im so glad i came here goddamn
 
I got interested in competitive battling in early BW and I signed up in a spanish forum, pokexperto, then I saw a few threads talking about Smogon and I came here to learn more about this game.
 
A lot of peoples give me negative feedbacks about smogon... so i check with my eyes this site. Even if my account is pretty new, i check this site from 2011, i think.
 
before I begin, I wanna say that this is more of a summary of my entire time interacting with internet message boards in general, rather than just a three sentence anecdote of the circumstances which made me make my smogon account, though smogon ties into it most of the time anyway and I wanna tell the story. It's also a bit tl; dr, you have been warned.

I was first made aware of Smogon around 2010 when I was a regular user on Bungie's offtopic forum. (I joined Bungie.net to get a nameplate for Halo: Reach and kinda just stuck there) There was a silly topic about Pokemon and someone linked the joke Spinda analysis from DP. I looked around the dex from thereand started reading the actual analyses and tried out competitive mons on serebii and PO, but I never really bothered joining the forums because bungie was more fun. Eventually I got banned from bungie's forums because I was a shit user with like 3 alts back then, so I focused more on mons. I continued reading analyses and I also stumbled across the create-a-pokemon project at some point, which I found pretty interesting. I actually bothered to access smogon's forums and watched a few of the projects (mollux, aurumoth, and malaconda) but I never bothered to make an account at that point. I was also doing wifi battles with people on serebii pretty regularly, but i eventually got bored with competive mons (maybe because the people from serebii weren't always the most "competitive) so I took a break from mons and picked up borderlands 2, got pretty serious with it, and was a regular member of gearbox's forums for about a year. Right around when XY was coming out, i lost interest in borderlands (mind, i'd already logged hundereds of hours across four max level characters at that point) and decided to get back into competitive mons. I was still aware of smogon, so I boarded the XY hype traind and made an account here, originally under the name "Salt the Flesh", a combination of "strip the flesh, salt the wound", a catchphrase of Psycho enemies from Borderlands (at that point i still played the game enough to want to name myself after it). My first post was one in a thread about fairies claiming mawile was the best (I didnt know how right I was...). Eventually my hype died, but then I found the create-a-pokemon project again, right when volkraken's project was starting so I actually bothered to contribute to that one. Said contributions earned me the ladybug which still remains on my postbit somehow. I stuck with CAP throught plasmanta and also made some friends through it, as well as the mentorship program when I was a mentor. Eventually, about a couple months ago, I was hit very hard with issues in real life. Those issues, combined with some issues in the CAP community that grew toxic, drove me to stop posting on smogon. Situations have calmed, so i've decided to come back and "hang out". btw, i like the new mentorship name :)

so yeah, that's my story.
 
my friend rick told me it was a good place to see what other peoples strategies are so i could develop my battle skills
 
when XY came out i thought for so many years that i knew pokemon well and could battle well. then i challenged one of my friends. he beat me without losing one of his pokemon. it's then that i knew i was doing everything wrong and needed help.

i'm still terrible but i feel like reading as many threads as possible will help me
 
I have been trying to learn to play competitively so I could be more involved in the pokemon fandom and I saw that Smogon has a mentoring program. Since I am absolutely new to competitive (never once had a competitive team) I thought this could help launch me into the metagame !!
 
Ok, my story seems a little different than others I've read, but I was a fan all the way back from gen 1, but after crystal I sorta died out of the fandom, just going into high school at the time. I stayed out of the loop for quite a while, until I started dating my current girlfriend a few years ago during Gen 4. She was a fan and got me back into it, Me still thinking that the first 251 were far better than the new "weird" Pokemon. but as I played more of it and got to know them and saw how awesome they were I grew back into a pretty big fan.
then XY came out and our local comic shop was hosting some Tourneys and we were like, why not join? We both got our butts kicked, but the people there were nice enough to teach us about EVs and IVs, and pointed us in Smogons direction. We've both lurked the site and used the Dex to build teams since then, but I just created my forum account today. I also recently discovered Showdown, and have been battling on there for about a month or two, increasing my battling skills as a result. I moved away from the comic shop that originally got us into competitive battling, but I swear if I was to go back now, I would be a major contender, they would hardly be a match compared to some of the people I've faced on Showdown.

anyways, thats my story.
TL:DR
Was a fan, died out, GF got me back in, local tourneys introduced me to competitive battling, they pointed me here.
 
I was at school, and my friend and I brought our ds'. I challenged him to a battle (it was late 2012 so we where both using bw2), and I was feeling slick as hell, because I had my powerful Samurott that was almost level 100, and that shiny Garchomp you get from the e4 champ. So I send out my samurott, nodding my head like "awww yeah, betchu don't have no level 97" and then he sends out his lvl 100 suicune.
I look at him and tell, "bruuuhhhh. Only noobs use legendaries, everyone knows that, gaawwwd."
He just laughs at me and says "you're so dumb."
Turns out he was crocune, and I got 6-0d. Later on facebook, I asked him how he was so good. He sent me a link of Smogon, PO, and PokeGen.
I like to think of that as the competitive pokemon starter pack :]
 
Played Pokemon Online and Showdown during Gen 5, when it came to Gen 6 I decided since this was so foreign to me i'd join the fourms
 
Always heard of Smogon, wanted to see what kind of place it was. Even though I don't hang around that much, it is still a nice place.
 
Being myself a competitive battler , i'm very interesting about participating in the smogon forums , because here is the greatest pokemon battling's community

i'am a new member , and i decide finnaly to create an account here to participate on the current OU suspect test of Greninja

I have 1 question for you old member :) , i got my 2700 coil ratting , do i need to synchronize my PS account with this one to vote ? if yes , how ?
i have no idea to what to do and don't want to miss my right to vote ^^

hope have help friends :)

PS: i'm french , sorry for my approximate english ^^
 
I've been following Smogon both on its website and on Facebook since two years ago, it was really interesting to know that someone made one of my passions into a serious business!
I found this website while I started to know what "competitive battling" actually meant. I was playing Black 2, still I didn't know anything about IVs and EVs and Natures. Smogon opened my mind on this stuff. I first was kinda skeptic about competitive battles and rules, but once you go competitive, you never go back!
 
Before I get into my backstory, let me tell another backstory; one of my competitive battling history. It all started in the 2011 Videogame Championships. Wait, no - let me rephrase that - the Regional championships to which I traveled eight hours by bus, train, train, bus, then train. I arrived with an unfinished team which included my starter Serperior (named Fangsnake* - I had no idea how to nickname) and a Klinklang I received over GTS for my Reshiram... Don't ask.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I won the first round against an equally unprepared player, then deservedly lost on the next battle. Utterly disappointed, I realized how pointless my excursion had been.

I had previously heard of IVs and EVs, but, as the ignorant kid that I was, decided that they weren't important at all and I was fine the way I was. Since my inadvertent discovery of Showdown in 2013, I have become more educated on the subject. Hence I started developing my team for the 2014 championships, which unfortunately wasn't finished in time for the tournament. In this process, I found the jewel of the internet: the Showdown chat rooms, where I met many awesome people (I've decided not to name any in case I forget someone, but you guys know who you are :D).

Then, I delved into CAP, which is one of my childhood dreams: I've always had drawings I wished I could send to the official Pokémon workshop. While CAP doesn't grant this much power, it adds a whole new creation to Showdown, and that's enough to me. Intrigued by the process, I felt an urge to be a part of it! So on the fateful day of August 28, 2014, I made my account here, with the same name as that on Showdown.

Whew! That took a while! If all of you skipped that extensive portion, remember this: I love Smogon, and hope to be a continued active member. Happy new year, everyone!
 
I got torn apart by my friend in emerald and he directed me here so i could git gud. Ive been around since a little before garchomp was banned in dpp but didnt make an account til a few months ago. This post makes me feel old as shit
 
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I watched some of the anime and played ruby/sapphire on GBA when I was young, so I always knew about Pokemon. Playing Wi-Fi battles over the DS wasn't that great, so I tried looking for something like PS! for a long time, to no avail. Then I started watching Wi-Fi battles from all these random YouTubers (TheKillerNacho, rchizzle) and they happened to mention the sim. I created my account during vBulletin but actually started using it during XenForo and got banned soon for posting in the RMT Archive (I'm not even kidding; there were some permissions problems). Eventually I got banned for a while and returned to play all the tiers randomly before going into C&C/GP (wow that was long ago). I'm not sure exactly how long I'm going to stay on the site, but it's going to be a while, definitely.
 
Was as breeder over at Pokecommunity where I spent time learning CSS and how to make fancy af trade threads. Pretty much everyone trading was either a shiny or event collector as no one was good enough to get mons with good ivs, except for one user who completely dominated the market. That user had a link to her Smogon thread. Never went back since.
 
I just dropped a reply in the introduction thread, but I'm here looking for counseling in how to become a competitive player, even more so since I'm new to gen 6 from gen 3, and hopefully add some human interaction while playing a Pokemon game, being the social butterfly that I am.
 
Always have been huge into pokemon, and wanted to participate in a forum setting. This is my chance. Been very competitive since gen 4 and have been previewing this forum for a long time.
 
I actually initially started playing competitively in 2009. I, for the most part, always played by Smogon Rules. I don't know why it's taken me six years to finally register an account, but I'm here to expand my knowledge in addition to give back to the community that's helped give me my competitive fix.
 
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