My Geography and JetPunk Story - 6 Years Commemoration

Hello! Well, it's been 6 years and 5 days because of procrastination since the fateful day when I opened the JetPunk website for the first time. So it's time for a commemoration blog, going over my story with geography and JetPunk, a Q&A and uh... other celebration stuff! Let's start!

It all starts when I was uh... really young. Young enough that I don't remember the exact times lol

I had 2 maps that I really liked to play with. Both were US jigsaw puzzle-maps where you put the states together, first a plastic one, and a bit later a foam one as well. From these I learnt the 50 states and their capitals. So about 2 years later, in 2014, I got a foam world map jigsaw puzzle with all the countries. I loved this one even more and spent every day looking at it  that's what i remember now, i probably ate and slept also once in a while and slowly learning a lot of countries and capitals throughout 2014. In 2015, I also started playing a lot of geography learning mobile apps nostalgic and some websites such as mrnussbaum.com where I printed so many maps and put them on walls too nostalgic, please make it 2015 again. By late 2015 my main interest was Indian geography. I was looking maps of India and it's states all the time and had learnt a lot of cities and districts I didn't know before. Now it's 2016, and it's time for...

Its March 5th 2016. I was completely into Indian geography and districts. I even started calling each day of each month a day of one particular state, based on its size. The largest state gets the first day of the month, the second gets the second, and so on. The fifth largest state at the time was Jammu and Kashmir not anymore, so I decided it would be cool if there was some way I could practice it's districts, or any state's, with an interactive map where you can choose the districts' names. I was thinking of an SVG or Map quiz basically. So I searched up "kashmir map quiz" or something like that. I didn't find what I was looking for, but the first result was a link to JetPunk's quizzes about India page. It looked nice so I decided to do some other quiz. I think the first quiz I did was the India Cities Map Quiz. I immediately made an account called "quiztubes", and tried to make a quiz. My first quiz was Districts of Himachal Pradesh for some reason. I made a lot of other, mostly low-quality quizzes, but I was having fun! For some reason they aren't on the profile now, but luckily they're still on the wayback machine. I did some more investigation on the wayback machine, and found a lot of my old quizzes.

Most of them were just lists of districts that had less than 5 takes, without even maps as they weren't added yet. I also remember I discovered the padding and coloring features and went crazy with them lol. I would end up changing the name a few more times, first to "Pawpsicle" and then to "vulture" which is the name now. I kept taking quizzes and making a lot until I got to level 35, and around 1,000 takes which I was really happy about. Like most people, I really wanted a feature when I first started, even though my quizzes had... questionable capitalization and way too much formatting. I also really wanted to have pictures in my quizzes, but I couldn't figure out the HTML as picture quizzes weren't added yet. One of the ideas I had was US State Flags, which no one had made at that point AND IF ONLY I FIGURED OUT THE HTML AND RELEASED BEFORE QUIZMASTER I COULD'VE GOTTEN FEATURED uh, I mean, I don't care about features, Quizmaster's US state flags quiz is great!!

The last 2016 wayback machine save of this account was in November, and if I remember correctly, I took a break for a few months starting in December. By this point, this account has almost 84 quizzes and 964 takes, with only one quiz above 100 takes, and the vast majority of them having less than 10. But once in a while I got comments, and this made me really excited. Even if my quizzes weren't that great, they still gave me inspiration to keep making them and improving. By the way, the blog feature was first added a few months after I joined JetPunk. I remember seeing a new Blog tab and not thinking much, never expecting that I would be making my own blogs a few years later. Before we go to 2017, here are a few pictures of that account, some quizzes, and how JetPunk looked at the time.

Sometime in Spring 2017 I started JetPunk again after a few months. However, I decided to make a new account. I cheated on some quizzes on the old account, googling answers for some reason. So I wanted a fresh start, and called it... well I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it was Pelican as that is my URL now yes, i was obsessed with birds for a while My oldest quiz on this account is from November, so I don't think I started making quizzes again for a while, but I probably did keep taking them. By the time I started again, I definitely improved, mainly because I learnt how to capitalize properly and STOPPED WRITING LIKE THIS AND STOPPED OVERFORMATTING

By now, most of my quizzes were A-Z, borders, or Pokemon quizzes. I also made some... fast typing quizzes. They are now mostly privated and locked away in the realm of fast typing quizzes. I didn't do too much in 2018 or 2019 as much as I remember, just a few quizzes here and there. Overall, I mostly focused on making quizzes. I had almost no activity in 2020, but JetPunk still had a place in my mind through this mostly inactive period. I remember checking the blog page a few times and seeing some blogs, such as a few from Malkiboy, but I never really read or made any. I wasn't really into the community, only making and taking. In this time, I also changed my name a few times in this long period, first to Incineroar327, and then to MegaRayQuizzer yes i'm a pokemon fan

However, I was focusing on another thing in 2020, that you might know about.

I'd been watching geography/history videos on YouTube since 2018 or 2019, and I thought a few times about making my own but I thought I wouldn't have anything unique when it comes to geography. But it was 2020, everyone is bored and trying anything they can so... on April 23, I drew a bad logo that I thought was cool on a piece of paper, stuck it on my window, and made an intro video recording it. don't watch that video

I had a few ideas, but I wasn't sure one to start. One I thought of was about India and Bangladesh's anthems, both written by Rabindranath Tagore. I thought it could be cool if I did it for Tagore's birth anniversary. What I didn't know, is that I coincidentally thought that one day before the actual date. So when I searched up and it said tomorrow, I started working on it as soon as possible, and made it... in August. I made some more videos in the next few months, but I took a long break in winter. I didn't make as many videos last year, so I'm planning to take a break from blogging for a few months now to focus on videos. But now to 2021!

In Spring 2021, I started to remember JetPunk and started checking it once in a while, just looking at random quizzes or Interesting Facts page. Eventually I started taking quizzes again, and started grinding every day. In about 2 months, I went from level 45 to level 65. Around the same time, I also started making some quizzes. I had lots of ideas, but I didn't submit much as I didn't feel like finishing them and mostly just kept taking quizzes. My first quiz that I submitted after a long break was about Indian Freedom Fighters, which I put some time into and was happy with. When I got my first spotlight award in May, I spotlighted this and got a few comments. It was fun getting takes and comments again, but I wasn't fully into quizmaking. I did keep adding quiz ideas to my list and submitting a few across the next few months. Now comes the best part :)

By June, I was at level 65 and I was kind of bored of quiz taking. You can tell because I'm still at level 65 after a year. I had a lot of quiz ideas, but I didn't feel like making all of them. Quizzes are fun once in a while, but I wanted to make a quiz that I would be satisfied with myself, and since there are so many quizzes, there's a chance it might go ignored even if I put lots of effort into it. I still didn't know how to make SVGs, so I didn't have any immediate idea that I really wanted to make.

Then, I noticed the create blog section. I'd seen it a few times, but I never really thought of engaging with the community like that, which isn't as necessary with just making quizzes. Outside of that one time I checked the early blog section and seeing Quizmaster's blogs, I never really thought of the blog section tucked away under the "More" button. But it was 2021, everyone is bored and you can try anything so... I decided to make a blog about India's largest cities, and also changed my name to TheNatureThread, same as my YouTube channel. As JetPunkers, we like to memorize cities, but sometimes just knowing the names doesn't tell as much about the city itself, so I wanted people to know more about the cities themselves. I wrote a blog with some of the largest cities in about a week, submitted it into an unfamiliar blog section, not knowing what to expect, and went to sleep. I woke up to see 9 comments, from users such as Afghabwe, MG17, and BigGeographyGuy. I was super happy that this was successful and that I got such positive comments from more experienced bloggers, and was motivated to make more.

The same day, I made my first blog comment on a blog from BigGeographyGuy. Don't tell him i know he's reading this so it doesn't matter, but I actually didn't read the blog, just left a suggestion and voted. This was the NATO union blog, the first blog where he started giving out empires to other users, more specifically MG17. I started to get into the habit of interacting more, and commenting on other users, mainly ZooTuber3000, BGG, and MG's blogs. In July, Aficionado entered the RUB, and also joined this "commenting network", while I released a couple more parts of my series. These 2 didn't do as well, but getting comments and contributing to the community kept motivating me. By August, I was one of the more active users in the RUB, along with ZooTuber, BGG, MG, and Aficionado.

BGG's empires series, one of the most popular blog series to this day, was especially great at that time when there weren't as many great blogs. The blogs felt like places where all bloggers would gather every time he posted and vote and talk about empires and stuff, especially the 4 of us. In one of BGG's blogs in late July, he had Greater India as a voting option for an empire. BGG had been giving the last few empires to MG for fun, but I decided that Greater India had to be mine! I was also making a video about India and Pakistan for my YouTube channel so I decided to do a promotion deal, where BGG promotes my video, and I get Greater India. Now that I think of it, that was a pretty one-sided deal. This finally marked the establishment of another power in this universe of BGG, a challenger to MG. MG was not too happy about this, so BGG promised him the Mughal Empire. However, I objected as this would trespass on my empire's territory, and instead requested that I get the extra land of the Mughal Empire. Aficionado stepped in and declared his own empire in my territory in India, as he believed that India should be ruled from India, while I'm based in California. And it turns out ZooTuber was secretly building an empire across the world. What?! 

We signed an agreement and made the first diplomatic mission in JetPunk, the Quadruple Alliance, with BGG as its leader! This made our connection closer and together we have conquered both land in our own universe and the JetPunk blog section!

After 4 episodes of the Indian cities series, I wanted to make something different, so that not all my blogs would have the same style, and I anyway had so many ideas. But before I get to that, I also made my first SVG in August, and getting quite a few spotlight awards made me want to start making some quizzes again once in a while, but I felt like making SVGs or more unique ideas only instead of spamming A-Zs and Borders like I used to.

Anyway, my next blog would be my biggest JetPunk project ever, and the one I am still most proud of. A blog about the Telugu language. I started this because of my disappointment with many people not knowing about this major world language. no seriously, it has more native speakers than french

I ended up writing 30,000 characters of history and HTML and made an end product that I am still extremely satisfied with, and posted in October. After that I wrote some more blogs, about topics such as flags and linguistics, but I also hosted a flag contest in October. In case you don't know/remember, one of JetPunk's most intense controversies was happening at that time. I won't go in to detail about it but everybody was hoping that the blog section would go back to normal and that there would be more high-quality blogs again. I thought for my part I could host a flag competition to raise the spirits of bloggers, a flag for JetPunk. This contest was finally completed in 2022 with 5 entries, with Aficionado as the winner. So that's pretty much it.

By this point, I've gotten 8,000 takes on this account, made 12 blogs, and gotten 3rd place in season 2 of blog games. With the Quadruple Alliance, we've also made 3 groups of our alliance, and conquered the majority of the world.

In conclusion, thank you to everyone reading this for making JetPunk a better place somehow, especially the Quadruple Alliance, as JetPunk really improved my 2021, and I am looking forward to many more years of blogging and quizzing. Celebrations will be held in 3 universes, in San Francisco, the capital of TheNatureThread empire in the Quadverse, in San Francisco, the capital of Chilefornia in DOTJE, and at [CENSORED] [CENSORED], [CENSORED], California, USA, where I live in real life. What, your GPS doesn't know where [CENSORED] is? Guess I'll celebrate on my own then.

And as I said, I'll probably take a break from blogging for a few months, to focus on my video, maybe some SVGs, and a secret Quad project you'll see very soon ;)

I remembered this after submitting and I thought this would be funny to tell. On October 24th, like any other day I opened JetPunk and chatted a bit on the Quad group. I went offline for about 15 minutes and came back to see 6 notifications. "Guys, Thread's account is gone!" "What! Why would he delete it?" I was able to use JetPunk from my account just fine, and was able to read these comments on the group, so I was confused. I went to see my create page and it said "You have been banned". Huh?!?! BGG left a comment on my YouTube channel, and I explained that I had no idea what happened. MG also sent an email to Quizmaster and we found out that he had banned me by mistake. This is probably one of my most interesting moments on JetPunk lol

I will also be doing a Q&A for this special occasion. I'll answer your questions about anything in the comments. Well, not anything, but you have common sense so I don't need to tell you what questions you shouldn't ask lol

So ask as many questions as you like! I love questions! Ask a lot of them!

Okay, I think that's all so... thanks for reading and bye!