I was first introduced to Pokemon when I was a young child, back in my grade school days. Both of my parents are working parents, so neither of them could really stay behind to take care of me either after school or on days off of school. Because of this, I was usually sent to a daycare in my neighborhood on such days. One daycare I used to regularly attend had a TV that was on regularly, and I would find myself watching the Pokemon anime back then. One day, it was a day off from school. The person who owned the daycare had two daughters (whom I was pretty close with), one of who was in high school at the time. I would bring my DS Lite with me to there on days off. At some point that day, she asked me if I wanted to play Pokemon, and I was like "sure". She gave me her copy of Pokemon Sapphire, and I briefly played it for a good portion of the day, and that piqued my interest in the Pokemon franchise. (for those of you who don't know, the DS Lite had the ability to play GBA games). For the record, as a side note, they also had a GameCube, PS2, and Xbox, and I was also introduced to the Zelda franchise (first game I played there was Wind Waker, and I really liked that too. I love the GameCube, and it was like my favorite thing ever when I was a child, to the point of obsession). So being there a lot sort of turned me into a gamer, not just a Pokemon or Zelda fan. I eventually actually bought Pokemon Sapphire itself and started playing it and enjoying the Pokemon gameplay, and later on Gen 4 too, since the Gen 4 games were really, really popular among kids my age at the time of my childhood (Diamond and Pearl were super popular, and later, Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver became really popular among us too).
Later on, towards my middle school days, I actually lost interest in Pokemon (and Mario too) for a while, since you know, that was middle school. That's the age when kids wanna be cool and start fitting in, and act like the "cool kids". Nintendo is looked at as a joke towards this age, and viewed as a "childish toy" company, and that kids this age think they're "too cool" for Nintendo, as we start looking at Call of Duty shit and the PlayStation and Xbox. However, I started to pick up Pokemon Black and White (both games), out of curiosity as a stumbled across their existence (I eventually bought a DSi when I was around sixth grade, the 3DS had already existed at this time), and mostly played Pokemon in secret during middle school. I liked both games, and started looking up shit about Pokemon on the internet. While I was looking up moves like "Dragon Claw" and "Dragon Pulse" (yes, I remember very clearly the specifics). One day, I clicked a link and stumbled across Smogon's page for Dragon Claw and Dragon Pulse on the MoveDex. I took curiosity in the Pokemon list on Smogon, and how they were divided into "tiers". I was still kind of childish during my middle school days, and I looked at the tiers, viewing Ubers as the "god tier", OU as the "strongest Pokemon tier", and NU as the "trash tier". I looked at OU like it had all the "best Pokemon" ever, and NU as the land of shitmons. I got a laugh at seeing how certain Pokemon were tiered, like how Druddigon was basically rotting in NU while Haxorus and Hydreigon were both OU, along with countless other Dragon-types, or sometimes being surprised at how Scolipede was NU or how Krookodile was RU. I witnessed the beginning of 2012 tier shift and got a real kick out of seeing NU lose like 12 Pokemon (Dugtrio shooting up to OU, and around 11-12 other Pokemon rising to RU). I loved seeing NU lose more mons over that year, such as Mesprit, Magmortar, and Cryogonal, and really got a kick out it all. I eventually joined Smogon when I was old enough, around September of 2012, when I started 8th grade, and year, here I am now, with a far better understanding of Smogon than back then. I have been here for a long time as a part of many tier communities, and later this one, and I've played Smogon's tiers, wrote many analyses, joined many discussions (particularly VRs), and yeah. here I am, as ScraftyIsTheBest. Btw, my name came to be because I was once a big Scrafty fanboy.