I would have to have brain damage to leave this place.
And I did for a while.
It does fly, but it’s been a brain stimulating AND informationally fun time, so many cool af threads here in Cafe Society & the political forums, especially given the Kamala*Tim energy flowing all over these days!
also, a surprising number of the most “readworthy” members simply have died IRL (sorry, i am notoriously bad with names):
- tubalady
- colibri
- hey opal
come to my (colanderish) mind.
truth. And some fairly entertaining truculent members have been banned. It’s not as colorful (or quite as erudite and interesting) as it once was, sadly.
I guess I’m just not as entertained by train wrecks as others might be, especially the deliberate ones.
Well we didn’t spend many years having to clean them up.
I have quite a few reasons for lurking:
-
I don’t read all these threads frequently enough, which means one or more of the following:
a. The comment I’m responding to is five days old and 30 people have commented since then and it feels like I’m resurrecting a zombie (though I’m doing that now, go figure).
b. Someone else already said what I wanted to say (or close enough), and people here don’t seem to appreciate a “+1,” “QFT,” “me too,” or “same” sort of post.
c. It strikes me as too much effort to read the whole thread and make sure that what I want to say hasn’t already been said, so I give up. -
In some threads, I feel like there’s this sort of sense of community where people are uniting over common interests, and I’m different enough that it would feel weird posting. For example, I like country music and most music threads are more about classic rock artists; I’m a woman and prefer some women’s fiction or female-centric YouTubers, podcasts, etc., while most threads seem to be more male-centric in that regard; I’m not as liberal as most of this board.
-
I feel like I have to be much more careful posting here as opposed to in an in-person conversation. When you discuss a contentious topic in-person (at least among my friends), there seems to be a genuine attempt to have a discussion, see things from a different perspective, and learn new things. I feel like on this board there’s more of an attempt to “win a debate,” and particularly when I don’t have a majority viewpoint, I just don’t feel like dealing with that.
When the page left AOL and disappeared into the internet I didn’t try and find it. They one day I wondered about the column and found it again. On AOL I was about 98% column and 2% board. So that was about a 5 year break.
I get everything you say there, you summed it up so well. I feel the same way sometimes.
I frequented the Straight Dope site starting around 2000, joined the forum quickly thereafter, drifted in and out over the years, left when the board turned pay-to-post and returned when that was lifted. I have mostly no idea about the dates of these events.
Joined in 2000 and posted on and off until 2014. I don’t know why I drifted away, but I drifted back a few months ago and this is my first de-lurking post! My husband @Tride stayed with it and kept me up to date.
So we have an @Alpine and an @enipla, but we have to keep of whether the alpine is coming or going?
I’ll give it the college try. Welcome back by the way.
Just to make it more confusing, @enipla and I work in the same relatively obscure tech field!
Thank you!
Ski lift business? 
Well done.
Hey @Alpine , are you still in the business? Are you still in Colorado?
I’m gonna probably get out of altitude in a couple of years. Good run of 32 years, but it’s becoming a bit much. Oh, and I’m gonna retire.
As God is my witness, I never realized the meaning of @enipla 's handle until now.
Oof. I may need to turn off my computer for the day after that revelation.
Yeah. I named my first dog Alpine. I live at 11,200 feet. So I just switched it around. Alpine becomes enipla. I swear, I’m not a chocolate Labrador retriever.
Yes, still GIS Director for a small county in Colorado, though @Tride and I moved to Bozeman MT 6 years ago. Remote work seems to be going just fine. I heard you were retiring! Best wishes. I’ve got probably 10 years to go and I’ll keep working remotely as long as they let me.
Like w/ Der_Trihs’, I simply assumed it was a word from a foreign language (in his case German, natch). Not exactly disappointed that they were simply backwards English words, but…