What does realism/milsim mean to you?

just as the title says, What does Realism/ Milsim mean to you? and how did you first get into it?

It all started for me in half life 2 mods: Insurgency mod, Battlegrounds 2, and Resistance and liberation, i loved all the organized play, each game had, and the ability to hop on a Friday night after school and game with your server friends into the wee hours of the morning, doing squad battles, and line battles, jamming out to whatever music i was listening to at the moment, back then it was more of a social shits n giggles game time, people would be playing seriously, but would be blaring silly things through there mics. then after i got out of the Army, i needed to fill a void, and those games no longer scratched the itch, so i went to Arma II which really is where it definitely just got me into Realism for life.

Realism/ Milsim for me, is letting the past live again through video game form yeah we wont get it 100% or close at all, but we can damn well try. we portray roles of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and try to honor them by playing professionally, tactically, sometimes goofy in a respectful way (soldiers goof off at times too), we play with  there mind set, not randomly going off into the sunset after spawning by yourself, hip firing into everything we see. realism/ Milsim is a sort of Reenactment, or act, you have to put effort into the way you play, to achieve it, its not mindless.

What is yours alls andwer to those two questions?

Realism to me is very new, but so far I've found it as a gateway to make some great friends, meet new people, and play with some experienced people.

Realism started as a fun event my DoD:S clan did twice a month or so. Then we started doing realism campaigns that spanned 6-8 battles over 1-2 months. I really enjoyed it. So, when someone told me that Insurgency was more realistic and whatnot, I jumped all over it. Unfortunately for my gaming career, I went back to school shortly thereafter and lost most of my gaming time to commuting.