Proof
My wiki page

I'm not sure how much of a tradition this is any more, but it's real enough for me so I'm gonna do it. I don't feel like contributing to the flood of unnecessary posts so I'm not posting this in any forum. Partly because there isn't any real "announcements" forum (SS) anymore, but also because I don't think I'm that prestigious of a user to do so.

Anyway, on to the festivities!
As is tradition on this blog, here's some music for ya'll to listen to while you read. Can you guess what the theme will be?
Tunes

I'll try to focus on the anniversary rather than Christmas.

I joined AoPS at the end of 2011, halfway through 8th grade for me. AoPS was actually near the beginning of my ventures on the internet, with most of my time having been devoted to Khan Academy before. I still remember my mom's old Dell laptop I would use.
I'm not exactly sure why I joined AoPS 2 days before Christmas; it was definitely during break so maybe I had extra time to check stuff out. I also don't remember exactly how I found AoPS but it was most likely recommended to me by briantix or his family and probably apolygonne. Many thanks to them~

They probably recommended FTW!, which is definitely what I spent the early part of my AoPS lifetime doing. Although I was only allowed an hour or two online per day, I devoted every second possible to FTW. During holiday break I was probably on a bit more, and probably more during the afternoon, but during the school year I always had to finish my homework and instrument practice before getting on. Usually this meant an active time window of around 8-10 PM PST. I'm not sure how I managed to do so, but I crammed tons and tons of games into those times. I wasn't (and still am not) the most intelligent mathlete ever, but the more my rating dropped the more I played. . . and played. . . and played. . .
I met people like thkim1011 (thanks for the physics help) and penguinkid88 (we actually go to the same college) and made countless memories. I feel like I've forgotten a lot of great moments on FTW but I still do remember some great times, like that time everyone use the /me function and the entire chat was blue for a solid 10 minutes.
I could go on and on about FTW. I played so much I got my 5 stars for games played before I even noticed I had more than 2 or 3. My games won stars came much slower but eventually I had them all too.
For my rating stars, well lol I had some help =P

Around 2 years ago I 'quit' FTW. Maybe it got stale, maybe I found other things to do (Tanki?), but my time on FTW decreased until I wasn't playing any more. In the past 2 years I've dropped in a handful of random times, and played even fewer games. Occasionally I saw AoPS legends on and would talk, but the thrill of the mem games and mass games just never got me anymore.

I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore reaper; but, when I first found it, my parents would probably say that about me.
I joined during Game 21, the super long game that dragged on for months despite being an hour between reaps. The game had actually started shortly before I joined AoPS, but I didn't find Reaper (or what it was all about) until sometime next year, when the game was already halfway through. That game clearly presented BashTilZzz as a reaper legend. I remember how he was a huge celebrity when he went on FTW. A few other names, like knittingfrenzy18, cerberus88, ninjashiloh, duck28, became legends too.
As much as I wanted to win a Reaper game, the closest I ever got was a second. Not a close second sadly, but more like a far second. I was winning that game for a while, but eventually ppathirana54 passed me and beat me by a very substantial margin. I went tryhard that game because it was Game 32, and now I'm not sure what I'll do. A few games later I think I achieved a respectable 7th place, but sacrificing sleep and risking parental punishment was too much for me. Still, I'll never forget those nights where I'd set my alarm, wake up in the middle of the night, sneak onto a computer (that wasn't mine), and experience the thrill of reaping amidst all the other night reapers. It was almost one of the unspoken clubs, which I found pretty cool. I would watch the clock go up and dive, go back and dive, over and over. Sometimes I got reaps when I wanted, but most of the time my perfectionist attitude wouldn't let me reap but by then it was too late. I spent a lot of that waiting time doing Alcumus.

I also remember when I was number one on the Geometry level leaderboard, not because I was good at Geometry, but because I grinded and grinded until I had done so many problems my level had nowhere to go but up. When I started on AoPS, FTW was the main focus, while Alcumus was one of those things I eventually got into to "fill in the gaps" whatever that means. I somehow got those really cool secret honors, which aren't really so secret if you visit the Alcumus forums, but that was cool I guess.

I'm probably known for being fairly active on the forums now, and I would say I am. Browsing the forums wasn't something I did until I was at least 6 months into AoPS, give or take a month. (Too lazy to go find my first post right now). I vaguely remember my first or second post being a cheeky reply to mathlover3737 (Alcumus legend) in the Alcumus forum. His reply really made me rethink the forums, which probably instilled in me a respect and appreciation for the forum and its inhabitants that I wish other users could have. From an early AoPS age, I always thought of the forums as a very professional place. To me, access to the forums was fun but also a privilege. Yes, I was still very immature, but I would say I was very careful before submitting each post.
I don't remember when it happened, but eventually I got my 5 stars for posts (was it 2500 or 2600 posts?). A good chunk of those posts was from Games forum though Before the update, I got to almost 3500 posts, but after the update I had just under 2500 posts. It took me a bit to get to 2500 posts, but that came again. Now I'm coming up on 3000 posts.

I wish I had time to reminisce through each event in my AoPS history, but my birthday is in 7 minutes. I could talk about my blog, about the time levans came on FTW and the alert box was used (that's still a thing right?), or about how I suggested the Reaper Hall of Fame, or that time I wrote a post about my FTW obsession and got a bunch of upvotes and 6 cubes. I could also talk about how I won a Greed Control game, how I finally mailed a postcard to levans and then forgot about it, how negativebplusorminus and I and someone else (sorry) accumulated hundreds of posts in the Fun Factory in one game.

It's kinda cool: in my transition to college, AoPS was one of the things that stuck out as "still there." And I know even as I go through college, graduate, and go on to do adult things, AoPS will probably still be there. Even as the maturity and clean prestige of the forums plummets, there's still hope for America.

And now it's 2 minutes until I have to hit 'Submit' and I'm trying to think of advice or something. I think it'd be cool to have a "My advice after 5 years on AoPS" or something but I can't think of anything.

Anyway, here's to 5 years on AoPS!

EDIT: I'm dumb I'm not even at 3000 posts. I thought I was lol.