A Retrospective on... Pretty much everything.

My three year anniversary on this app is in only a little over a friggin week…

I know it's kinda a weird flex to say this, but I think I may be one of the longest-running s still on Amino along with Invy. Throughout my times, I’ve made tons of friends, maybe a few enemies, and countless of mutuals.

And man, what a ride has it been. Granted, three years really isn’t that much time in the sense of a lifetime scale. But looking back at myself from the start of my time on Amino to now, I ended up basically becoming a new person. While my outlooks in life have remained fairly similar in many regards, I’ve grown far more mature in not only expressing these opinions, but how I carry myself in general.

And so, just for a sense of nostalgia, I’m gonna look back at the memories and everything I’ve gone through here. Because, why the hell not?

Let’s begin.

The Beginning

I ed Amino in March 2016 - about a year after I started playing Smash competitively. Forgot which exact video, but I do know that it was a YouTube ad that got me here. I thought the place was pretty nice, as someone who only really hung around Twitch channels, Facebook groups, and Skype crews (yeah… Skype).

Didn't quite know what to make of it at the time. It looked kinda cool and the blogs I read were alright, I guess. But after I was still kinda on / off until I started writing my first legitimate blogs

Looking back at them almost all of them suck… really cringey humour, worse word clarity than ever, and just overall just too childish for me to enjoy reading again. But hey, people seemed to like it, and it started to get me some attention by other s.

The Debater phase

My true breakthrough blog was Who's the Best Character in Smash 4? to this day, that has more likes than any other post I've ever made. Funnily enough, it really didn't take that much effort to make in comparison to some of my other more refined and thought-out ones, and definitely is one of those blogs that have so many likes only because of its relevance in the Smash community.

But hey, publicity is still publicity. With blogs like that out, I started become more and more recognized in chats. I can't really recall the super early chats I was in very well, sadly.

Though one I definitely didn't forget was called Free Help: a small little chat which featured me, Vile, Inv, Buandon, Audreasy, Ionz, Yousef, and a bunch of other old friends. The name of the chat is exactly what it sounded like: ing one another. It made for a very wholesome and close bond that I never had with online people before, and being around them felt real nice.

That chat really opened up my softer side on Amino. I was always trying to act cool and edgy all the time, but once I got to know them my connection towards Amino and its s started to become much more genuine.

Chapter 3: The Wifi warrior phase

My blogging activity started to slow down towards the end of 2016, though this was mainly out of sheer laziness. During this time not a lot happened aside from going to Vietnam with my family. But with Amino tourneys starting to become more popular during this time, I definitely made sure to all of the ones I could.

Now, I already made a name for myself on Amino prior to this of course, from word of mouth by other well-respected Amino players to the fact that I was literally the only decent G&W main at the time. But I never was able to find many Amino players better than me until mid 2017 when i started to make a bigger effort to play on Amino.

And with that, came Disposable Heroes.

Even though both iterations of DH ended kinda tragically, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a hell of a time running it. The first iteration alone had Spargo, KDD, Jay Cide, and other sick ass players. We unfortunately didn't crew battle too much but while I ITTEDLY MADE SOME TERRIBLE DECISIONS AS A LEADER, I think everyone enjoyed their time in it until it fell.

Also can't forget this amazing event

Chapter 4: The Curator phase

Starting from 2017, my blogging skills really started to sharpen up, and many blogs that I probably would write similarity if made today started showing up. I started towards working on a more positive image of myself rather than letting the argumentative nature I always had get the best of me. Notably, I teamed with the ever so sexy Aquos to make a blog on how to improve Amino. Usually when people make blogs on such a subject, they're really toxic, emotionally charged, or simply talking out of their ass. I didn't wanted to do this, so the focus of my blog was instead more optimistic.

After getting mostly positive from this blog, it then struck me

“What if I ran as curator?”

Ok I prolly would've ran for curator even if I didn't make the blog. I mean I ran the year prior lol

And so I did. In all honesty, I was kinda expected to get the spot as I was starting to become one of the most common names on Amino. But that didn't prevent it from being ever so satisfying when I saw my name announced on the New Curators post.

Being a curator, to be honest, wasn't anything that special. I feel like people still treated me like who I was before I got the pretty green tag next to my name. But I do gotta say that being treated like an elder by new s was a very funny experience, even if a little weird. I really didn't know that people addressed curators so politely that often lmfao.

This was probably the most eventful part of my entire time on Amino, and not just because of becoming a curator.

was also because I met Reaver

Actually no don't cross that out, it is because I met Reaver.

Being in love is a weird weird thing. It can make you feel these weird pleasant feelings and because of them you act in ways you wouldn't otherwise. In hindsight I definitely have to it that the early days of my relationship with Reaver was really, REALLY cringey for any outsiders. But I still can't look at those memories with a frown or of disgust. Talking to her during the summer of 2017 was really special.

It's a shame that what followed was, well…

The “I wanna die era”

We've all been in that dark place before. Where you either just wanna sleep, cry, or kill yourself. I was never really a stable person to begin with, but what was going on in late 2017-2018 was unquestionably the worst times in my life. I'm not sure if I wanna go into too much detail so publicly, but I'm sure your imagination knows exactly what I'm talking about.

On top of the overwhelming sadness, I also had college applications to deal with. Keep in mind that where I live, Senior year grades are what get you accepted or not for colleges. And to make matters even worse, I was on the verge of failing one of my classes - which was something I really couldn't afford for my academic career.

The combination of both the sadness and stress is why I became such a depressed edgelord, in case you were wondering why a year ago. Every day did I want the anxiety to end, but it never did. And because of all of this, I really did not have motivation to do any blogging or even much interaction with Amino aside from curator duties.

In fact, I never really ended up blogging consistently again ever since what was going on during those times.

The Zombie Phase

I can't say much about this time period as I was hardly on Amino. As a matter of fact you could say I'm still in this phase now.

I left my position as a curator to lift a bit of weight off my shoulders when it came to responsibilities, and just in general, I kind of just stopped interacting with chats very much. My DMs became less and less active, but even just beyond me, Amino seemed to be slowly turning into a shadow of its former self activity wise.

When I started to get better mentally by around December 2017, my urge to blog came back, though due to school I was not very free. I ended up making two blogs during early 2018, both of which I would say we're a massive step up from many of my other blogs. These blogs had more of an enjoyable personality, as well as deeper insight than anything else I've done on Amino.

Looking at those blogs now and looking at what crap I used to write back in the day really is night and day, as if two different people wrote their own piece. One was a short, childish, nearly incomprehensible draft. The other was well-conceived, well thought out, and with just the right amount of colour so it isn't annoying or bland. The difference really was night and day.

Where am I now?

I’m now a first year in Music and Computer Science at the University of Victoria, and while I’m still far from being employed in anything for my field, I do wish to end up working on sound design at one point, especially for video games. Of course I still play Smash competitively, though I’ve gotten sick of dealing with wifi lag and play mostly offline with people in my local scene / Us. I do also help run the tournament streams now as well as make vods.

Mentally I’m doing way better than I was about a year ago. I still get episodes of depression and even suicidal thoughts but they are way more manageable than they used to be, so despite all the pain I’m still keeping my chin up.

Sadly, my video game projects have been all but abandoned. Thanks to my music program giving me free access to pianos whenever I want, I actually play a lot of the music I’ve written for these games. But as far as actual coding and real game-work, all of it is gone and I’m not really interested in starting again. Maybe one day though.

As for now, I'm working towards getting a Youtube channel up and running, with content focused on Smash bros philosophy and Music theory, as well as some other silly vids here and there. There's no content on it just yet, but I’ll definitely share the Smash related content here when they do come around

What’s my future on Amino?

Unfortunately as far as blogging is concerned, I don’t really have any plans in making any more content. With new responsibilities with my local scene, with school, and with Youtube, I don’t really have time nor a desire to keep going with more blogs. I might poke around on Amino still and talk to fellow peers and maybe even play wifi, but as far as actual content is concerned, I don’t intend on going back anytime soon.

If there’s one thing to get excited for though, it’s that I DO intend on recreating a lot of my blogs through Youtube videos. I’ve always saw blogging as a way of making Youtube content without the endless hours of editing and filming, so reimagining my best blogs is definitely a plan of mine.

And… that’s it!

I’m trying not to make this an official “goodbye” post because I don’t want to risk eating my words. But seeing as I’m already increasingly less and less active on Amino, I guess a goodbye might be warranted. That said, I’m still plenty active on Twitter (@YouGotCyrekt) and Discord (Cyrekt#4417). Check me out there if you wanna chat or play video game.

Anyways… Peace out peeps.

Thanks for the memories, and hope y'all have a good one.

Yours truly,

Cyrekt