Circa 2012 I was just a dude who got my first online Pokemon game (Diamond) from my brother in law, who had used his old DS and games to pass some time while serving in the USMC touring in Afghanistan. I had completed the game and wanted to make teams and whatnot, so I would draft up old gen 4 teams on paper. I didn't even know Smogon existed until I was looking up how to play competitively; I joined the forums and made an RMT for one of my teams (some team I thought was REALLY good with illegal Lapras sets lol) and got shit on for it. I decided to join Serebii for a while, and got used to the forums there. Eventually I got banned for making alt accounts, so I remembered my smogon account. At this point I was a little invested in competitive Pokemon, and played a lot of BW OU. From then I started playing a lot of LC, until I went through several breaks where I would steadily lose interest in Pokemon. I don't play at all anymore except the rare battle here and there, I still stay on the site because there are several people I enjoy talking to and its a fun nostalgic way of passing the time.