As ** Auntie Pam ** and others have said. Does anything really happen week to week? I know that I watch way too much television but the soaps have to be in the bottom of the heap.
I have more important things to watch, such as anything Star Trek or CSI. 
I’m 28…I remember my mom used to watch Days of Our Lives when she was a stay at home mom. My first college roommate who wore Princess shirts really liked this one with some sort of magical talking wishing well.
One of my friends from college loved Young and the Restless…
I have never been into the whole soap opera genre.
These days it would be something like Luke and Larry. 
Ugh, no. I would rather clean the bathroom every day for an hour than be forced to sit through any of them. I’ve never, ever understood the appeal.
I used to watch The Young and the Restless (picked the habit up from my mom), but haven’t in almost a decade, except for stopping to watch Victor’s most recent wedding. (Anyone who still watches - how many does this make? Seems he was getting married every other month when I was watching.) I’m 31 - and male (gasp!). I was 16-22 when I was watching.
Sounds just like my wife. She grew up watching the show with her mom, now she keeps up by checking in with the Soap Network. My wife has known some of these characters since she was a toddler, so the appeal for her is keeping up with the characters and their lives (almost as if they were real people). The storylines and acting are bad, but I guess that what happens when you do an hour show everyday for 100 years or however long the show has been on.
It’s actually Bo, for “Bufort Oglethorpe.”
I blame one of my college roommates. She watched OLTL, so I watched OLTL. And kept watching even though she wasn’t my roommate anymore. I stopped a few years later because all the storylines were beyond horrible.
The reason I kept watching for so long is it only takes a couple of decent-to-good actors playing a couple of decent to good characters in a couple of decent-to-good storylines to make me think “I want to know what happens next.” I like continued storytelling in general with familiar characters that I “know.” I like tv series where the plotlines continue more than movies where it’s over in 90 minutes. I tend to like novels in series, too, with recurring characters.
I just stick to nighttime soaps now (“Dirty, Sexy Money,” “Ugly Betty,” “Desperate Housewives”).
Mid-thirties.
I used to watch Brookside for a while, in the period where it had spousal murder, heroin-dealing and a loony Christian cult all happening in the same suburban cul-de-sac. But I don’t watch soaps for a similar reason I don’t do the lottery. The continual cliff-hangers compel you to tune in again and again, with no real gain.
I do sort of listen to The Archers on BBC Radio 4, but only because I don’t bother to turn the radio off for 15 minutes.
(Early thirties.)
I started watching the ABC soaps in the summer of 1971 with my mom. I was 12. It was fun! I remember when Erica was a teenager. I watched the Luke and Laura romance and wedding. I watched all the way up until 1988 or so. Then work and family and everything took over - I didn’t even have time to watch the recordings I had been making. I married my ex and we started watching a different soap opera - WWF wrestling! It was lots of fun, too, but I don’t watch that anymore either.
And presumably because there are no cliffhangers - unless you count the unexpected breakdown of agricultural machinery.
I must confess that my wife and I both watch several of the Spanish language soaps that come on Univision. Neither of us speak Spanish and we’ve usually had a bottle or two (or three) of wine when we watch, but some of thos people are drop dead gorgeous so that makes it a worthwhile endeavour.
“Your donkey is standing on my foot, Miguel” seems to be our standard line for all the dialogue.
Have you ever seen one with a guy with a chihuahua, who looks a little like John Waters (the guy, not the chihuahua)? At our house, we catch that one every once in a while, and love it, but we don’t know what it’s called so we can’t look for it. We don’t speak Spanish either.
Before I was in school I watched with my mom. Then in high school my sister and I picked up watching the Guiding Light, and I remembered some of the people from when I was little. Now I tune in every few months (I’m off on Mondays) and am amazed not to be completely lost.
It only bothers me a little that the teen hearthrob from my highschool days is a grandfather now on the show.
I’m not ashamed of my soap watching. There have been moments of outstanding acting (of course those coincide with periods of better writing). We had a thread about it not long ago. I don’t bring it up in lofty conversations about the arts, but I enjoy them once in a while.
Soaps are like meringue. It won’t sustain you but it’s pleasant once in a while.
Hmmm…I don’t recall that one. We’re partial to the one that seems to shift settings between Old Mexico 1870 and modern day. Fuego de Sangre maybe? Is that “Fire in the Blood?” The men either look like romance novel cover models (built like Fabio with long flowing black hair) or Pancho from “The Cisco Kid” and the women are either Daisy Fuentes clones or little round ladies with moustaches.
Sabado Gigante also gets lots of play in the house if we’ve been hitting the tequilla heavily.
I had a good 25 year run following Ryan’s Hope, Days of our Lives, Another World, and Somerset. I got hooked and never bothered to get un-hooked, figuring I should work on the pills, cigarettes, and alcohol first.
Eventually I lost interest.
The best years were Another World when Harding LeMay was writing for it. His book “My Eight Years on Another World” is a fascinating read.
I used to watch Another World when my Mom had it on. Let’s see, that would be back in the seventies. I cought a few espisodes sometime in the nineties, I think, and they had pulled demons or something into the plot. There were priests and possessions. Or something. They didn’t seem to be having nearly the fun with it that Dark Shadows had had.
When was it that Harding LeMay was writing for them?
When I used to spend summers with my aunt, everything would come to a standstill while she watched her “stories.” I never paid attention, but I would sit with her and read while she watched. Later, I would sit with my sorority sisters while they watched.
When I was editor of my sorority magazine, I got a call from the publicity people promoting the movie Soapdish, starring Sally Field, Kevin Kline, et al. They were convinced that, because sorority women were so involved in soap operas (?), it was essential that getting promotion in magazines like ours was crucial to the success of their project, and they wanted to send me a press kit so I’d do a big buildup for the movie. Yeah . . .
Well, I still have the press kit somewhere. My magazine doesn’t accept advertising except for the usual vendors like jewelers and sportswear companies that sell our logo stuff, and we do book reviews only for those books written by our members. A movie review? Only if a sister were starring in it. And yet they were utterly convinced. I got a number of the other sorority magazines on an editors’ exchange program, and I don’t think I saw *Soapdish * mentioned in a single one.
I work from home sometimes and keep the TV on in another room. I usually have it on TCM. Never soaps.
I’ll admit it. I watch soaps during my lunch break. I watch the first half of Days and the first 15-20 minutes or so of The Bold and the Beautiful. It’s mostly just something on in the background while I eat and read a book at the same time.
I started watching soaps as a kid. We were into The Young and the Restless, B&B, As the World Turns, and Guiding Light at our house. Now there’s a weird sort of nostalgia surrounding them in my mind that makes me feel like it’s summer vacation again. Last Friday I watched Guiding Light (I hadn’t for years and years) since I had the day off and felt like I was 10 years old again.
“Like sands through the hourglass…those are the days of our lives.”
My mother only watched her “stories” on NBC.
The Doctors
Days of Our Lives
Another World
Somerset (which was a spinoff of Another World, IIRC)
Yep, this brings back memories of summer and me as a tot being underfoot while she ironed and watched the never ending stories of the soaps.
My grandfather used to own a little motel in Destin and one summer I cleaned rooms with my soap-addicted aunt. We’d wait for a commercial to move on to the next room. That’s probably the only summer I watched them, though.
No, wait! I remember trying to watch one of them a few years later, and getting really aggravated because this woman was pregnant and it was some big deal and she was scared to have a baby and I was all, “Bitch, why you scared? You had a baby two years ago! Remember, the father’s mom kidnapped it and you ended up letting her keep it?” They never, ever mentioned that this wasn’t her first baby. It was like the first one never happened. Sheesh.
My sisters watch, or at least used to, “All My Children” so I’d end up watching bits and pieces as well whenever we’d get together.
There’s one show that is essentially a soap for guys: “Rescue Me”. I watch that.