wow - same way as me! haha
Late 2001. My best friend had Hybrid Theory and she listened to Pushing Me Away in a constant loop. I kinda ended up hating it for a while, but then I saw crawlingās live video and I made the click. I loved it. And that was it. I was linkinparked for life. 
LOL Mine is pretty nerdyā¦ I was like 8 years old or something, and I watched this Naruto (you know, the cartoon/anime), and it had Numb on, as background musicā¦ so I was TOTALLY AMAZED by the song and thought like āIm gonna check this out laterāā¦ and I looked, and looked, all over the internet. After a year I randomly watched some video with Numb on again, and it said āSong: Linkin park - Numbā.
[size=30]SO THEN I BOUGHT ALL THE RECORDS AND SINCE THEN THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE BEST BAND FOR MEā¦ and now I joined this cute little Website here :D[/size]
I had this friend who listen to the same music as I do and he had āNew Divideā and I was always asking him who sings it; linkin park. and I thought linkin park was a single rapper but I found out later that itās a band by exploring their songs on YouTube. and finally I ended up buying every linkin parkās album (studio and underground albums). this is my story and it happened 3 or 4 years ago. Now, Iām finally in the US (Iām from Saudi Arabia), I hope I can attend one of their concerts. I missed the one in phoenix this year because I didnāt have a car at that time (living in Tucson). and I bought a ticket for their last concert in pensacola, FL but unfortunately Chester had to do a surgery and the concert was cancelled. I hope the linkin park continue their great work and I attend as many concerts as I can while Iām here in the us 
Well, that happened when Meteora album came out. My sister was listening to it, and I liked it too. First video I saw was In The End. I loved it. After few times of non stop listening I become a fan of LP, and Iām really proud of myself, and thankful for my sister!
I got Linkinparked when i listened to breaking the Habit ā¦ it was in 2006 or 2007 i think
I got ālinkinparkedā in 2000-2001 when I first saw the video of Papercut on finnish tv-channel! I was about 9 years old then, which is pretty awesome cause Iāve listened the same music for like 11 years now 
And LP has been my ultimate favorite band since then
lol just copied this from my profile info but figured itās just an answer to that questionā¦
I found out about LP ever since I saw one of their videos, Crawling, on MTV. It was probably in 2001 (I was 10 years old back then.) I was very impressed by the band. People around me also played their music, and I wanted to have an album myself. I started to like them even more during Meteora. That was also the first LP album Iāve ever got, it was in 2004. Ever since then I became really hooked (some people call it āobsessedā) =). Now, as a member of the LPU for several years I am still very hooked!
LPU member since LPU5 - LPU8 (kinda forced to leave in 9) and came back in LPUX, still here ^^
I was in middle school. Hybrid Theory had just come out and a friend of a friend had it and he played it through One Step Closer, and I thought it was cool. But, I had already learned in the wisdom of middle school that girls are only supposed to listen to boy bands and pop music, and boys are supposed to listen all the screaming music. I removed Linkin Park from my memory.
Untilā¦ a year later when In the End became a single. Not only did it sound like music made from the purest chunk of awesome I could find, it was on the pop radio. Hah! A loophole in your silly idea of gender roles! I am going to listen to this Lincoln Park thing if I want to!
And then later I bought Hybrid Theory, and found out that this band did all of those other songs too. Iād never seen one album be this good. I tried to join LPU1, but my dad didnāt want to use a credit card on the internet, so I settled for LPU 2.0. And I quit pop radio, too.
My āLinkin Parkedā story began at a college football game 10 years ago. In the End started playing during halftime and āHoly crap what was that amazing musicā ran through my head. I kept humming the words that I heard and looked it up when I got home. Then started my fandom. Been a fan ever since although iām more of a fan of the HT-MTM days haha.
I was watching MTV during the Summer of '03 and the āFaintā video came on. I was completely captivated and I could not get the song out of my head. I kept watching MTV everyday just so I could hear the song and find out who this awesome band was. I was hooked. Fast forward 8 years later and here I am. [biggrin]
My sister was the biggest fan of them when their Hybrid Theory was newā¦ I liked them okay then, but stopped listening for a while. Then about a year and a half ago, a freind of mine put on A Place for my Head when we were riding in a carā¦ got the CD for myself and fell in love with their lyrics/music and bought the rest of their CDās!
[signature]āMusic unlocks for man an unfamiliar world having nothing in common with the external material world which surrounds him. It is a world where he forgets all feelings which he could define for another in order to surrender himself to the inexpressible.ā
When in school around the time Meteora came out, heard Breaking The Habitā¦ rest is historyā¦
My dad was a fan since day 1. I was 6 when HT was released so I didnāt fully understand the music but it was what I was listening to every single day. The day Meteora was released, happens to be my nameās day as well and dad gave me Meteora as a present so when I took a listen I totally fell for Numb and started looking them up everywhere and listened to HT more carefully. And since then Iāve been a fanā¦later on as the years went by and I grew older, i realized how much they mean to me. 
Iād to share my story too ā¦ cool topic by the way [smile]
It āstartedā in 2007 I guess, when I was in the 7th grade of High School. There was this new classmate, I befriend with him and after a while he told me to go on youtube and listen to the songs āBreaking The Habitā and āA Place For My Headā by Linkin Park. The funny thing is, that that wasnāt the first time I heard about LP (haha how ridiculous would THAT have been [lol]). One or two years back I saw a Linkin Park sticker on the bag of someone in my schoolbus and he wasnāt the only one with this sticker, I almost saw it everywhere. For a long time I didnāt really notice it but somewhen it went annyoing and I was like āWhy the hell is almost everyone a fan of that band ?ā and that was when I decided to hate this band. Also if a friend asked me if I wanna listen music with him on his new MP3-Player I said no, because he only listened to Linkin Park. I kind of felt crappy about never have listened to a song and even though talk shit like that, but I guess, thatās me.
To short this thing a little bit ā¦ I never had listened to any of LPās songs before. Well ā¦ when this new classmate told me to listen to the songs I did so, donāt really know why. When I came home from school that day, I quickly went on youtube and searched for Breaking The Habit. I just took the best video I could figure out at the first view and ā¦ it blew my fucking mind. I was like āHoly fucking shit. This is beautiful and so intense.ā. Even though I didnāt really understand what this guy was screaming about, I could feel it. Unfortunately, I didnāt listen to music in that time very often, so I had never heard metal until I watched a fanmade video of A Place For My Head. The fact that I didnāt really like screaming in songs caused me to not like Linkin Park at all. However, a few days or weeks later, I this classmate visited me at home and when he went upstairs into my brother room, I thought of put on some music he likes and searched for some Linkin Park songs. The first thing I found was the official music video of What Iāve Done and I guess THAT was the birthday of my Linkin Park addiction [biggrin]
From that day on, I first searched for other Linkin Park songs and quickly found One Step Closer, Faint and In The End. One Step Closer took a while, but someday I began to like it ā¦ if Iām not mistaking, I was very pissed about almost everything that went on in my life back then. And from then, I like more and more LP songs, until I got some albums via internet and deleted the ones I didnāt like. But after a few months I stopped listen to their records and I felt kind of ā¦ overlinkinparked. I listened to Breaking The Habit everyday a couple of times when I got home and it was a very cool and fresh feeling but somehow I loss the hype for it. But thank the film S.W.A.T. which has Figure.09 in itās soundtrack. I was sitting in front of the TV and watched the movie and when I saw this car driving through the dark night, I felt it again ā¦ and I decided to listen to Linkin Park again at the next day. And from that day on ā¦ I almost never stopped, listening to my most favourite band.
Sorry if this is too long to read without falling asleep or taking a nap between, but I really tried to keep it short. And if you want me to, I would also tell you a pretty funny story about Numb/Encore and my own radio station [lol]
Best regards,
Jason
I got ālinkinparkdā when I was only six years old. Hybrid Theory had just come out, and one day when I was in the car with my mom In the End came on the radio. Instantly, it became my new favorite song. My cousin owned HT, and let me listen to the whole album. I fell in love with the band. I begged and begged my dad to buy me the cd and finally he did. Here I am 11 years later and theyāre still my favorite band. I canāt imagine my life without them =)
1999 as a hybrid theory street soldier - from then hardcore
That was by the end of 2000. I was living in London at that time. A friend of mine had come back from the US with a certain album called āHybrid Theoryā [smile]. I had been through really hard times and immediately got a blast when I listened to it because the lyrics were exactly expressing what I had been feeling without being able to put it into words. Linkin Park offered me kind of a spiritual therapy and helped me tidy up the mess within my life. Iāll never grateful enough because they probably saved my life and helped me prevent me from doing stupid things.
I became a LP fan nearly 7 years ago. I heard Numb/Encore on TV and i liked it. For some reason it caught me and i wanted to know more about that band, so i listened to the ārealā Numb and i loooved it. I began to listen more and more stuff of them and loved them more and moreā¦ long story short: At the end i ran to the next cd store and bought all cdās they released before [biggrin] I became a big fan or better said i got really ālinkinparkedā. They really changed my life, they helped me through good and bad times
And now iām happy that i finally had the chance to become a member of the LPU wohoo ^^
I got linkinparked the first time i saw āin the endā video. I directly fell in love with this song, and when i bought Hybrid Theory, my passion for Linkin Park started! this year, i saw them live for the first time and it was awesome! i canāt wait for the next album and next tour to see them again! their music makes me feel alive. LP rules!!!