Yes, I'm in for competitive battling for 2 months.
offtopic: But TBH this metagame is getting boring with Scizor and Salamence appearing once in every 5 teams...
Don't worry, that's not off-topic lol. I know people who have quit OU because of stuff like that (including me lol).
But anyway, I like Pokemon. The anime is pretty horrible imo and I haven't collected trading cards since the 1st generation and I had all of them except Articuno, but man they have changed a lot. Nothing that could grab my interest again.
I still like the games since besides the people telling you you're a Pokemon master all the time (which makes it hard for new players to realize how much different competitive is, including me in 2007), it isn't really childish or anything and it's actually very difficult to beat the Battle Frontier. Ask anybody who has tried it - a mere little kid probably can't beat it.
I also like Pokemon for the competitive play, which I guess is a whole different way of socializing in a lot of aspects. You get to chat with your friends and watch their battles.
At the same time, there have been times where I've stayed at PC only for the social aspect of it. I've quit competitive Pokemon several times (sometimes for a break, sometimes because I needed the metagame to stop being horrible and unplayable, but never out of disliking Pokemon itself really), so I stayed around to call D_A ginger (<3), to say that Aura is too conservative (<3<3), and to give them all a taste of history of the history of the Great War (<3<3<3)...which reminds me, I sure did spare you with the lack of battle log in the wandering thread, so please thanks me ^_^
But seriously, I'm here for both. If I lost most of my friends or wanted to quit competitive permanently, I would probably leave. Luckily, neither of those things are going to happen anytime soon, so I guess my friends are going to have to put up with my Anti's America lectures on the server for quite a bit longer, lol.