...I won something?!

Last year, (well actually, it was only about an hour before the New Year in my time zone) I was casually browsing PokeCommunity like I had many a night before. I don’t know what exactly prompted it, but I decided that I was going to look up two things. The first would be where I ranked in terms of most posts on PC. With a grand total of 1,181 posts, I came out as exactly the 700th highest poster on PC. When you just look at it like that, it doesn’t seem all that special. But, when you consider the fact that OVER 325,000 MEMBERS have signed up over the website’s history, that’s a jaw-dropping figure. And after doing a little bit of research- at least 206 of the top 700 were not active on the website within the past year, which would put me even higher up the list if they were removed (another 102 members had N/A for their last visit, so that number could be higher still). I’ve always believed in quality over quantity of posts (as is evident later in this blog update), but it’s still fascinating to look at these numbers.

The next thing I wanted to do was search my name across the entire forum. Again, I can’t quite recall why I was doing this, but maybe I was just looking for some interesting old posts (like that one challenge I signed up for a few years ago but completely forgot about). Whatever it was, I quickly forgot about it when I saw two certain threads show up in the results: Member of the Year Voting and MOTY 4th Gen Games. Since I would have only had votes for 7 of the 40ish categories, I didn’t bother voting, so that couldn’t be the reason. Could it have been possible that there were members that actually voted for me in a category?!

Being quite honest, the only category I hoped to get a single vote in (if I got any at all) was for Best Event with the Retro Gaming challenge at PCX. Even that I considered a long shot, especially with popular events like iSketch, Skype and the Easter Egg hunt. After realizing it wasn’t that, I finally found what my name was there for: a nomination of Best Usertitle from Airbourne Bubblun.

Truth be told, my usertitle of “The Unown Truth” came about when my avatar and signature were, you guessed it, Unown themed. I thought it was a pretty clever pun, so I decided to go with it. As I switched up my theme, though, I forgot to change my usertitle- which I guess turned out to be a good thing (my profile picture continues to stay Unown B, though). While I didn’t win, one vote was good enough for me, so I thank you Airbourne Bubblun (or Bubbly/Bubbles/Penta Penguin) for enjoying a good pun.

But then there was still the MOTY 4th Gen Games thread that my name was apparently in. This remains one of the handful of boards I read through every time I log on to PC, so I was excited to see if there was something I had, in fact, been nominated for. Before I scrolled down the page, I looked at the six categories trying to guess what it could be.

Best Travel Journal Entries? Never written one.
Most likely to answer your 4th Gen quick question? Probably not.
Biggest 4th Gen Fanatic? I try not to play favorites across the generations, so I doubted it.
User you wish posted more? Personally, I wish I posted more, but I wasn’t sure others necessarily did.
Most interesting thread creator? Considering I've only made two public threads my entire stay at PC (none in 4GG), it wasn't going to be this.

That left “Most elaborate 4th Gen poster” as the only other option, which I felt could possibly fit me. Lo and behold, only two votes were cast in the category, and they happened to be for me. I wish I could think of an apt synonym for how I felt to see I won something, as small as it may have been overall. But to get the votes from one of my favorite members at PC (Hikari10) and the head honcho of 4th Gen Games himself (Curious.) was quite flattering. By the way, I owe both of you a big virtual hug.

And I would have to say, that title now seems pretty fitting. I could have just said a simple “I’m flattered, thank you!” in the results thread (where my username doesn’t have the Supporter treatment like some others *coughcough*). Instead, I ended up making an entire blog post about it. Or, you could say, I went and elaborated myself. And just as with my number of blog and forum posts (this included), I’d much rather go with quality over quantity.

Now with 2012 behind us, I think that it's time to get working on my big campaign here at PokeCommunity: Brendino for Member of the Year 2015!