I got the Orange Box for Christmas, and began playing almost immediately. So I'm playing alot, because Valve owns a fair amount of my soul, and after getting a vague idea of how TF2 works, I bop about from server to server, finding some nice places to play, but mostly little children who behave like ... well, little children.
Finally, I decide to try a custom map (too impatient often to wait for downloads), and the name "Lazytown" catches my eye. I hop into the server and (a) start to do better than I had in other servers, and (b) find that I really like the people who are playing here.
Someone (wish I could remember who. It was around 1/19 or 1/20 on the Lazytown server) starts giving the recruitment pitch, probably addressing someone else, but I started asking questions like, "so why would I want to do this? what do I get?" because it struck me as odd that a clan (normally a bunch of elitist pigs) would want so many people to join for free.
Whoever it was finally got fed up and said, "I give up. Just go to
www.edgegamers.org and check it out" and left. I remembered it, came back here the next day or two, and liked what I saw. I signed up, and the rest was history.