Let’s guess which celebrities are likely to be lurkers (or even members!) of the SDMB, and which ones, well, not so much. Celebrities that we know are really lurkers or members are exempt from consideration. But feel free to list any that you might know about.
Here’s a handy rating system:
0-- I don’t think they even know how to read.
1-- If they happened to find the boards, they’d probably run away screaming.
2-- I sincerely doubt they read us.
3-- Maybe, maybe not.
4-- If they’ve heard of us, they probably read us, at least every now and then.
5-- Well, hi there <insert name here>!
So, choose a celebrity, give them a rating, and tell us why!
Sandra Bullock gets a 4. She is admittedly obsessed with the internet. I’d heard of this place long before I started reading and posting, so I’m just going to assume she has, too.
Well supposedly Richard Dreyfuss and Kelsey Grammar (in seperate instances) both 'fessed up as dopers / lurkers in similar threads (I think Grammar’s user name was “DrFrasierCrane” even). Both posts were several years back and I’m not going to even try to dig up the old threads, but somebody else must recall one or the other posts. Can someone back up? Anyone?
If they count as celebrities, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the behind the scenes talent on “The Simpsons” ranks around #4 on the scale. We know they’re smart, many of them are young (making it more likely they’re internet savvy), and in Simpsons DVD commentaries, we know that they’re at least looking at Simpsons fan sites online. It wouldn’t be too big a stretch to imagine one or two of them making their way here.
I think we’d need some sort of confirmation that a “celebrity poster” was really who they said they were. I don’t know what kind of “confirmation” would be sufficient. I guess it would vary on a case by case basis.
I agree about the Simpsons’ writers. Definitely a 4 as a group. And I don’t know enough about Sandra Bullock to have an opinion on her rating, but it doesn’t surprise me that she could be a 4.
Conan O’Brien gets a 4. Maybe even a 5. His type of humor is compatible with a lot of what Dopers find funny. And since his show is constantly dealing with current events of many different types, I wouldn’t be surprised to know that he looks to boards like the SDMB to determine what kinds of topics people are especially interested in at the moment.
Soledad O’Brien (CNN) 3. She seems cool enough to be a Doper, but she might be one of those superwomen who doesn’t make the time for things like reading internet message boards.
Miles O’Brien (CNN) 2. Seems to arrogant to consort with the digital hoi polloi (even if we are the very best of the digital hoi polloi!)
Jon Stewart–5. Do I even need to explain this one?
Y’know SOMEONE at Mythbusters is a Doper (besides the obvious one who was a Doper before he became a Mythbuster and told us about it: Q.E.D.). I don’t know if Jamie’d be wasting time online, but Adam, almost definitely. Then again, Jamie’d be the lurker type. Hmm… I’m going to go “Mythbusters”: 5; Adam: 4, Jamie: 3.
Alton Brown I think is a 4, and I even have my suspicions as to who, but I would never “out” him, even if I could prove it.
George W. - obvious 0, even if he could find the Power key on his PC. Even if he ended up here, he wouldn’t be able to hold his own and he’d get banned after a meltdown. Cheney? Hmmm…I’m gonna go 3 here. I wouldn’t put it past him to lurk in the darkness of the Pit and take a few troll-y swipes once in a while. Clinton? 4.
I’m actually convinced that we have quite a few celebrities who are Dopers that we’ll never know about. The world’s just too small not to, and cyber-space is the only place many of them can go and just be one of the masses. Frankly, it’s stopped me sometimes from star-bashing. I’d hate to read some of the things about myself that people write about stars. I mean, if you do looney or illegal stuff (I’m looking at you, Mel and Tom!), then that’s one thing, but I get uncomfortable with some of the negativity around people who aren’t always asking for it, because I often wonder if they’re reading what we’re saying.
I dunno how much of a celebrity you need to be, but I read and followed an old doper Antiquarian who wrote for National Geographic and posted a featured article on the boards regarding Stonehenge. Nat Geo is sort of famous.
Eh, I don’t think there are any famous people on here. I’ve never heard the Dope being mentioned by any famous people (besides Cecil, of course), and I just don’t think the boards are big enough to say it’s statistically likely.
On several occasions I’ve read some threads (noteably hot button current news in the Debates area) where several weeks later the basic premises of several posters in a particular thread showed up in the stories and analysis of several well-known network television correspondents’ reports. It may just be the news types arrived at the same ideas and conclusions independently, yet I’ve seen several that were literally identical with posters here. While it is certiainly possible that several high-profile news media types may lurk here, I would think their minions do lurk here for story ideas and story slants.
In the “Wash-Board Road” episode, you can see Grant doing research by surfing the internet. A site he uses is the Dope. I do know that Grant, Tory, and Scottie (from seasons past) are on Myspace, so it’s not too far-fetched that some of them are Dopers as well.
A logical certainty, since QED got the job partly on the strength of his work here. So it’s just a question of who it is, and how deeply they lurk.
Depends on your definition of “famous”. We’re known to have a few authors among our number (Eve Golden, Phil Plait, etc.), who are known outside of our community (Phil gave a talk here a year or two ago, and most of the physics department, at least, knew who he was). And then there are folks like OpalCat, who seems to show up all over the damn place on the Internet (though probably nobody off the net has ever heard of her). Of course, those are just the known ones: It’s difficult to tell how many “big name” celebrities might be here anonymously, and even harder to tell which ones exactly.
