Social Why did you join Smogon?

Martin

A monoid in the category of endofunctors
is a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
People join this site for all kinds of reasons, even if their reasons for staying change over time. You get people who continue using the various competitive sections of the site, there are people who confine themselves to OI, you get people who quit competitive and remain exclusively in Cong/firebot/GL/sports arena, and you get people who join to play ASB or discover circus after joining for a different reason who proceed to focus their presence on that section.

Regardless of what you do now, what was the reason you originally signed up to Smogon?

For me, the reason that I joined back in 2013 was because I wanted to write analyses. I was a new player, and the thought of having something I wrote be featured in what was, in my mind at the time, the definitive guide for how to use a Pokemon competitively was just so cool to me. I'd read analyses top to bottom, word for word, and was just completely enthralled in them and the patterns within their writing (anyone else remember when almost every analysis had "the crux of the set" in it?), and I joined smogon so that I could write. I was unaware of the competitive discussion section and the social forums and OI, and I just focussed myself entirely on that section and, after having a BW NU Luxray set uploaded, I decided that I was going to write full analyses come XY (much to the various QC teams' dismay hahaha), and I just spread out from there really.
 
I wanted to get my second place Heart Gold Battle Factory run out there on the leaderboard, I'd been using the site for quite a while but I hadn't joined any internet forums before coming here.
 

Xen

is a Community Leaderis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnus
Wi-Fi Leader
Well I've been lurking the forums since 2008 when I actively played DP OU, but around mid 2011 when Black/White's RNG was cracked, I started learning RNG abuse for the Gen III-V games and got involved with the Pokecheck community so that people could have easier access to competitively viable (and non-genned) Pokemon on physical carts. I developed friendships with the shoutbox regulars, and since most of them had accounts here, I finally decided to register in 2012 to keep in contact with them outside of Pokecheck.

Even though Pokecheck died long ago and I lost contact with most of the users from there, I'm still here kicking. My activity has been more focused on Discord than posting here in the forums as of late, but I've been pitching in with some social media work behind the scenes, more specifically the Facebook Pokemon giveaways that happen every Saturday. As far as competitive Pokemon goes, I mostly just stick to Battle Spot and VGC now, with a dash of RU and UU every here and there.
 
Been lurking ever since 2004. Even had an account back in 2009, but forgot login credentials. When OR/AS came out I decided to rejoin. Always loved contributing, especially when it come down to such an influential franchise as Pokémon and its community.
 
Maybe I'm misremembering things, but back in 2004/2005 Smogon was pretty much THE forum for competitive 3rd gen, and Netbattle was THE way to play Pokemon online (previously people had used IRC bots).

Back then, the community for online battling wasn't nearly as big (perhaps in large part because the GBA had no online function, hence the requirement of using a simulator, and the internet as a whole had discoverability issues back then), so I guess you could say that Smogon was a big fish in a small pond, but if you were one of the few hundreds of people that played competitive Pokemon online, the discussion basically all took place on Smogon. There were some other Pokemon forums that had some competitive discussion purely by virtue of being big Pokemon forums to begin with (like Gamefaqs, Pojo, and Serebii), but those forums tended to have more discussion of in-game stuff and most people's version of "competitive" play just meant having a decent team for link cable battles (not breeding for good IVs or even having optimized EV spreads), so Smogon (as a forum that was dedicated purely to competitive Pokemon discussion) drew a lot of people from these forums that wanted a place to actually discuss competitive Pokemon. There was also the TVsIan forum where people discussed competitive battling just because it was the "official" Netbattle forum, but as I recall that community was kind of decaying and Smogon pretty quickly sucked up most of the people from there.

So like most people, I joined Smogon because it seemed to be the only place on the internet that was geared primarily toward people who wanted to discuss Pokemon as it was played competitively on simulators. That's what got me in the door, anyway.


There's also a cultural component that made Smogon a bit of a draw. For one thing, it was pretty elitist, which I liked at the time: I was tired of having discussions on general Pokemon forums where randoms would often interject to say that playing the game competitively meant we were playing it wrong ("obsessing over the details of EV spreads isn't fun, why don't you guys just have fun, it's a video game, why do you care so much about math, why take it so seriously), and Smogon's elitist attitude was sort of the perfect counter-weight to that (play to win, get good or get out).

That brand of elitism was just part of a culture that I recall as being very sophomoric. Early in the days of Smogon, when the site was still finding its identity, you had some teenage wannabe philosophers trying to have philosophical discussions on "serious topics" so that they could sound impressive and smart. In another category of discussion, I recall there also being quite a bit of personal storytelling, sometimes this took the form of thinly-veiled brags in the form of stories about how they got so drunk and had these crazy party experiences, or telling stories about their sexual escapades, but a lot of it was just telling stories about weird and crazy things that happened to them. I recall one of the more amusing threads in early Smogon history being from a guy (who, as I recall, didn't even really play Pokemon) talking about his experiences in India, and finding the most colorful metaphors to describe the various disgusting things he experienced there. There was also a lot of crude and mean humor, like people finding creative ways to insult each other. Though much of it seems very sophomoric looking back on it now, at the time it was kind of the perfect blend of ingredients to make a 14-year-old say wow, all these guys are so cool!

By the way, I hope the above paragraph doesn't sound like I'm trying to dunk on anyone; for all of the faux-sophistication of some users who tried way too hard to seem erudite, I did encounter some really intellectually stimulating material (if I recall correctly, it was through Smogon that I first discovered Paul Graham's essays), and the threads that were just people posting stories from their lives did make for a lot of interesting reading in an era before blogging and social media was really a thing. In a way, reading stories from various internet strangers was a basic exercise in empathy; it gave me the chance to see the world through other people's eyes in a time when I didn't spend a ton of time offline interacting with people who had different perspectives.

It could also very well be that I'm misremembering how big a deal all of that was in relation to what the forums as a whole were, but in an era when I was 14 years old and basically every major Pokemon forum was trying to be family-friendly, Smogon's edginess was an undeniable draw. Smogon was where all the "cool kids" were.
 
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earl

(EVIOLITE COMPATIBLE)
is a Community Contributor
Idiot boy who tried tried to prove that eviolite Eelektrik was viable in PU.
Didn't do anything for a year until I accidentally happened to find the gen 7 OU analysis reservation thread on the day it opened, snatched Alolan Muk, and now I mostly just suck at Mafia.
 

Da Letter El

Officially internet famous
is a Community Leader Alumnus
I liked pokemon a lot growing up. Like, a LOT. to the point where kids at school would make fun of how much I liked pokemon. However, I cared a lot more about getting into hour 700 of sapphire and doing random shit in game than feeling bad about being teased.

Gen 4 rolls around. I had seen my brother mess around on netbattle a long while before, so I knew online pokemon battling was a thing. Did a few google searches and found and downloaded shoddy battle.

Played for a little bit (my second game ever was getting ass blasted by gorm and then shit talking him when he only 5-0ed me instead of 6-0ed, good times), and it was impossible to play shoddy without hearing about Smogon. But I didn't really look into it much until this Indian kid asked me to join his clan. So I did, and through that I met a bunch of people who were better than me at pokemon. It naturally followed that I should probably throw an account up on the site where most of the "good battlers" go if I wanted to get any better.

And now I'm a mod despite barely playing mons at all t u r n u p.
 

Conni

katharsis
I found out about Smogon by reading some TFP articles that someone linked in PS! and I was interested. Also because my old PS! buddies wanted to join Smogon too, but I didn't really get into Smogon that much until a few weeks later when I read more TFP articles and got interested in TFP. I think a lot of people found Smogon by PS! or vice versa honestly.
 
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Ampharos

tag walls, punch fascists
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
initially found the site when i was screwing around with netbattle/shoddybattle back in the day

then i read a smog article on this thing called "mafia" that seemed pretty cool

then i lurked for like 3 years before i was finally like "hey what if i, like... PLAYED mafia?"

5.5k posts later i'm still no good at it
 
I mostly joined for CAP because I was fascinated by the idea of competitively oriented Fakémon made through a specific process, just like the process rules used today.
 

dom

Banned deucer.
I'd spent a lot of time on showdown already, so I figured I should make an account because there were things I'd already missed out on.
 
I joined because a friend told me about EV Training and I googled it and wound up here. Ended up getting way more involved than I ever foresaw and made a bunch of super cool friends. I did eventually burn out from all my commitments here and irl around 2012, so I quit cold turkey for nearly five years and came back for the start of SM! Definitely have enjoyed my time being back thus far :]
 

churine

lunatic+
is a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
When I was like nine years old I heard about this thing called EVs and how they work, so then I tried to torture myself to EV train a Bashful likely imperfect IVs Magmortar back in Platinum cause I thought Magmortar was a really good mon cause I thought Electivire was (spoiler: i was wrong; theyre both horseshit), and I was too lazy to give a fuck about natures and especially IVs cause I didnt want to breed on hours. I then looked up a set and found Smogon, realized they had sets for most mons and thought the site was really cool. Though be lucky you didnt have to see a nine year old on Smogon tho, cause I didnt know the forums or battle simulators existed till April Fools Day 2013, where I went on Showdown and was greeted with the best fucking sprites ever made (holy shit why did we skip the sprites this year i wanted to see gen 7 afd sprites and i just see broken image files cause i play on afd server :c ), and was saddened they were gone they day after. I lurked a damn lot after, picked up LC on the way cause I thought it was ez ladder, then decided to get a Smogon in 2015, but I lurked another year before posting regularly, around the same time SM dropped where I decided to play LC again, and even if I'm still shit, I'm still here for some reason.
 
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I first joined way back when I moved from PO to PS, but I didn't stay around very long. Only recently did I come back as I've started to develop an interest in eventually contributing to Smogon and trying to break into the tour scene. At the very least it's quite the learning experience, and I've definitely advanced as a player since I joined here.

I actually held off on joining Smogon for quite a while (I was somewhat active in the Serebii competitive scene back when that was a thing) because I had the impression that it was quite elitist, and to be fair, in some ways it is. However, the snobby elitist atmosphere I had in my mind doesn't really manifest here very often. While Smogon users are more than happy to tell you that your teams and sets are trash, they'll also take the time to explain why they don't work, suggest better sets, and point you towards whatever resources might help you improve as a player. Maybe that's elitist, but I also think it's more productive in a competitive environment than entertaining the delusions of some that their favorite Pokemon is the most incredible thing ever or whatever.

I dunno, maybe I've just become somewhat of an elitist myself, haha.
 

OLD GREGG (im back baby)

old gregg for life
Despite the barely controllable urge to write a book here describing in titilating detail my on and off relationship with the Pokemon franchise. I'm just keep it short and sweet. Been playing Pokemon since back when it first came out. Didn't realize other grown ass men still played this until I joined.
 

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