Conservative posters: What's your story?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

What I’m interested in learning, primarily, is how did you get yourself aware of the existence of the SDMB, and the Straight Dope in general?

For me, I was cruising the humor shelves at the bookstore at Pealridge Center in about 1989 (for something humorous and enlightening to read, ya pervs), when I came upon a book called The Straight Dope (A Compendium of Human Knowledge). I picked it up, devoured it in a couple of days, and went looking for more the following week. I found it in More of The Straight Dope. Both volumes traveled with me as I ended my Naval sojourn and returned to civilian life. I used them as both light reading and reference guides.

One evening in 1999, while driving home from work, I turned on the Mr. KABC show on the radio, and was surprised to hear Mr. KABC mention to his guest an interview he had once had with Cecil Adams. Immediately, I called the station, blew off the guest, and inquired about it. Mr. KABC was kind enough to tell me about the Straight Dope website. I didn’t have internet access at home at the time, so I dejectedly resigned myself to not learning much more about the phenomenon that is the Straight Dope. When we obtained our first Earthlink account later that year, I immediately corrected that deficiency.

Now, for some reason, I do not think of my experience as being typical. I have the sense that most people who become aware of the existence of The Straight Dope do so by encountering the feature in their local alternative press (what I self-deprecatingly refer to as “commie rags”). Because of this, I also have the sense that the SDMB membership’s left-leaning tendencies are wholly to be expected (right-wingers, by my expectations do not tend to pick up and read commie rags, much less become fans of their featured columns). In point of fact, the presence on this Board of as many conservative posters as we do have strikes me as anomalous.

So, all you Reagan-lovin’ tighty-righties, how did you manage to find us here?

Everyone’s introduction stories are welcome, of course, although I can’t help thinking that it’s been done before. I’d really like to learn about the conservatives.

2

I Googled something work-related back around '03 or so. The very question I had was addressed in a SD column. I found the archive fascinating and it became a daily habit. Didn’t join the SDMB until about a month ago.

3

A leftist friend told me about it.

4

I’d never heard of the Straight Dope until I got here. Hadn’t read the books, didn’t know about the column. But there used to be a small feature on the AOL news page or opening page or somewhere like that, called “Wacky Weird News From the Wires.” I took to looking at that, and one day there was a link from one of those stories. I came, I read, I signed up. The board didn’t, in those days, have quite the obvious slant it has now. But that was a long time ago.

5

One of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer internet friends had “Fighting ignorance since…” as her sig. I googled the phrase, and found the columns, which led straight to the message boards.

StG

6

I found a link to the Straight Dope on bored.com. Then I started reading through the Threadspotting archive.

7

I’m more independent than conservative, but I wanted to point out that this board wasn’t always *nearly *as liberal as it is now. I wonder if the majority of “conservative” posters are from those olden days?

8

I started reading the books, starting from the very first one. I absolutely loved them. Eventually the internet came along, and I discovered the Straight Dope usenet group. I was active there the whole time, until it became clear that the real action was on this message board. I showed up here in 1999, and have been here since, without even much of a break.

Apparently, it helps if you have no life.

9

I thought I was Conservative before I got here, but found out I’m more Centrist, and probably would be considered Liberal by most of the posters in this thread.

I got here from Snopes. The message board mentioned a Straight Dope article. I read one, and was hooked. But I stayed away from posting until I heard you were going free to post. I may have been the last person to sign up under pay-to-post, knowing my guest membership would not expire before the switch.

As for how I got to Snopes: I’m pretty sure it was a random link on the Net, but, other than that, I don’t remember.

10

I’ve been around since the AOL days. I imagine there was a short lapse between the time I ditched AOL and the SDMB came online. I was aware of alt.fan.cecil-adams, but I never participated.

Mostly all of the fiscal liberals don’t bug me here, and I’m mostly socially liberal (but for a few things) unless it affects fiscal responsibility, so some people would debate that I’m even a conservative.

11

Started reading the books, in 1986.

One day after this amazing thingie called the internet was in a glowing box on my desk, out of curiosity I typed “www.straightdope.com” in the url window, and here I am.

Before we discovered audiobooks, my wife and I would read Cecil’s books to each other on long cross-country drives. There was nothing political about my arrival here.

12

Found it through a link to Cecil’s excellent “Who wrote the Bible?” series. Kept poking around on the site, and then Scylla’s famous groundhog thread came up on classic threadspotting. I was hooked.

EDIT: Oh, and I’m liberal on most issues, but I do find myself on the conservative side of debates with my pinko friends, especially when talking about fiscal policy or gun control.

13

That was actually Dex and Eutychus.

14

I don’t know that I’m conservative, but I suppose I would be by many Dopers’ standards. In college, I always read the SD column in the weekly paper, I bought the books, and in '99 I found the site. It’s probably not good that I’ve been here for 10 years, but most other forums are boring in comparison.

15

Pretty much the same here. I didn’t expect the forum to be the alluring snake pit of Bolshevik degenerates that it is, but oh well, where else can you throw out three random half-remembered facts about a book or film from 30 years ago & get back the title & all relevant info in 30 minutes?

16

I enjoyed the newspaper column and the Straight Dope was one of the first things I searched for on line. I’m rather surprised that anyone would think conservatives found this message board through a different process than liberals.

17

IMDB forums, but you’ll also be told to fuck your mother 43 times.

18

WTF? I said y’all were alluring!

19

That certainly fits me, a 1999’er entering my tenth year of membership here. In 1999, the board was much more welcoming of conservative dialoge and I could not have imagine that one day I would be called evil for being a conservative, or told that as a Hispanic I was secretly laughed at as an “Uncle Tomas” by my Republican friends.

I was a fan of the books, and found the website as a result. I read the first book before there were any others out!

20

I’m categorised as conservative everywhere but in the US, so one answer is I recieved flier for Straight Dope with my subscription to Pravda.

More correctly Google found a thread in GQ.