How Sarah Became A Nerdfighter

I'm not sure if I remember everything exactly about how I became a Nerdfighter, but let's try. Here is Version 2012 of how I became a Nerdfighter:

A friend - I met her online in a forum about ski jumping - told me that she just read a great book and that I should read it too. That book was An Abundance of Katherines. Later, she also told me to read Looking for Alaska and that way I was hooked up with John as one of my favorite authors. 

During the election period in 2008 the same friend sent me the link to the Obama Llama Duck video. The video was so hilarious that I decided to check out the other videos made by the vlogbrothers, and I was not disappointed! The majority of their videos was incredibly funny and smart and it didn't take me too long until I hit that Subscribe Button.

I don't remember exactly why, probably somebody posted it on Facebook, but I watched Charlie's video in which he ate baby food. He was cute and funny and when I found out that he is affiliated with the vlogbrothers, I instantly subscribed and watched all his videos. Thanks to Charlie I also found and subscribed to Alex Day, Michael Aranda and the Five Awesome Girls. That's the point where I started to regularly watch Youtubers. 

Someday I thought it would be nice to meet some Nerdfighters, so I signed up at the Ning. I was barely active there; the Ning is messy and I had the feeling that there are only 13-year-olds and spam accounts. 

Like Mia I was super happy when they opened the original Your Pants. I really liked it there, there were many interesting people and finally it was a normal structured forum. I also met some Austrian Nerdfighters there. 

When Your Pants got hacked, I still visited the site every day to see if it's back. I was happy when I saw the new Your Pants, but I still don't like it nearly as much as the old forums. 

I hate that boring, unstructured design and while the notification system with @names is a good idea in theory, it's a pain in the ass for me in practice. I had to disable notifications because I got piles of email everyday that somebody mentioned my name. You see, I was one of the first ones to sign up, so I chose the username (and display name) Sarah. Now, every time someone @replies a Sarah (and many many people still don't understand that you have to use the username, not the display name) I get a notification. Annoying!

I don't know any Nerdfighters in real life and I've never been to a gathering. There are no Nerdfighters in my city and Vienna is too far away to just go there for a gathering... Maybe some day I will attend a gathering, at least now with my sister living there, I can stay there for free. 

And that's pretty much it!