my older brother kept showing me meet the team videos when we were younger and our parents wouldn't let us buy tf2 because it was an online transaction

then it went f2p and he didn't really like it as opposed to me

Back in 2009 or 2010 my sister was encouraged by her online friends to play TF2. We shared an account. Through association I built a love for the game, even though I never took it very seriously in those early years. I was a frequenter of idle/trade servers for like 5 years until I started to play the official gamemodes more consistently. Through the acquired skill of pubs and various mge/dueling servers I eventually got picked up by some players in the valve official servers. Late middle school/early high school years were pivotal for me in competitive. I made a few friends but most of them have moved to other things

had been sick for two weeks non stop at home and finished all the games I had back then, figured I'd try out whatever was free on Steam and could run on my mom's laptop, this game looked ok, thought it would keep me occupied for a couple days and I'd forget about it upon returning to school. here we are 8 years later

for comp I just randomly got asked in an upward pub if I was interested in playing comp by a guy who'd seen me hit a baby airshot and suddenly realized I was the chosen one for his UGC Steel team. he wasn't wrong.

Got introduced into tf2 through steam when I couldn’t play on my xbox for a bit, then got into comp tf2 through nislt aka siN from his frag clip of the day series.

Can't remember how but I saw the Fresh Meat tournament advertised.

I was aimlessly spamming chat in a process pub asking if anyone wanted to play. As it happened, Jimb0t was in that pub. He pretty much laughed in my face when I asked him if he fancied being on my team (i think he was in high or some shit which apparently is a bit better than fresh meat), but kindly offered to coach us, as did Cider.

Shortly after, a few of us went to whatever I series was the one where B4nny came and played soldier for an EU team. We got absolutely diddled by pretty much every team and got like 2 rounds total. Our first game in the open bracket was against Zen and Dr Phil for some reason. Overall it was good shit and people we met were cool so I kept on playing.

I saw the minecraft tf2 mod but I couldn't figure out how to play tf2 because I thought all videogames had to be torrented. Later in high school a friend was a mod on lazy purple's friendly servers and taught me how steam works. I was a friendly for like a year and then i played exclusively on a christian community server.

Some dude called linkuser would come by and wipe the floor with everyone so i snooped around on his profile and figured out theres this thing called UGC. valve eventually killed community servers so i figured I might as well do comp

it came to me in a fever dream when i was 7 and now i have a deeply anchored trauma and cant stop

i bought the orange box in 2010 when i got my first laptop

found comp through twitch john's youtube

was forced at gun point by a thug on the street of Glasgow

Used to watch my dad play games since I was able to walk (usually sof2 and ut2004) then remember one night him and a few of his old clan mates played this new game TF2. Remember clear as day him playing spy on gravel pit missing a sap on a sentry then dying to said sentry and him drop kicking the nearest object to him which just so happened to be a 3/4 full glass bottle which ended in him having several stitches.

Fast forward 3-4 years I get my first pc I play nothing but orange and prophunt for 500 hours then I find mge and play my dad he then for the next month beats me every single time. A few weeks after my dad gets bored of playing me (beating me) I meet this guy called gabaa who tells me about etf2l and yeah the rest is history.

Just after the last season I played with ascent I tell my dad I won best player/scout/ofclasser and for the first time in about 6-7 years my dad plays mge with me. I finally beat him

my older brother cosplayed as the Heavy in some con around 2014 and some time later when searching for a new game to play, that came to mind and gave it a try

started comp prob because I made some friends and saw they played in pw protected servers, so I started asking around until some Chileans brought me to they HL lobbies, and discovered MGE also by that time. my pubber spark didn't last too long, I always played with a natural competitive focus, and started tryharding pugs at around 700hrs

My father got the orange box for his birthday and I just liked the game from the first time I played. It was also one of the few fps I was allowed to play. I have no idea how I found out about competitive tf2, probably through tf2mid.cz.

played The Orange Box when it came out, then a year or two later asked my parents for a PC and bought TF2 with it.

Played PC only because I looked up videos on how to play, found OMFGNinja's videos and saw it was way smoother and he was doing such cool stuff as spy at the time. My 2nd day browsing the community server list, I found a couple of guys in cp_gravelpit alone that had the XLR8 tag on; I joined and wanted to ask how to play. I mentioned I saw their tags in his videos and that's what drew me in. They picked me up as soldier after playing with them enough and then I cemented my future to being a fucking idiot online.

saw an iaresnipar video of gunslinger frontier justice engineer on hightower and then got the orange box for christmas

befriended an open player in a pub and started playing tf2lobby and eventually liko said i should play pugna so i did

.

older brother was a trader (apparently he made an absurd amount of money, don't know how much), and he got me to play
one day i saw a guy with an "lft" tag and he told me about 6s and UGC, and i got hooked

I got this game for father's day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRQ4EvZlZy8&list=PL2FF18FEC11384DDD

met someone in mge named wilka and he got me into tf2lobby

https://youtu.be/20YWd10_i5Y

also yogscast