Dopers are slowly loosing their drivers licenses. Or at the very least they can’t drive at night or need to get home before Matt Lock comes on.
Close! We met on the board, but not at a Dopefest.
I met my wife on a message board, just not this one. Been together 14 years now.
What is Matt Lock?
See? That Old Timers is already setting in.
He meant Matlock (TV series) - Wikipedia. Which was unashamedly aimed at the Greatest Generation then-60-something to 70-something demographic.
Watching the commercials for age-relevant products is/was enough to convince you to take up sky diving with a group of practical jokers sometime in your 50’s to ensure you never get to the Matlock product placement stage of life.
The 'Dope skews pretty heavily as much older and much more atheist compared to where you are in life.
Although since you’re looking for a pen-pal not a date you might want to try connecting with PSXer. You already noticed him from this thread: What would you tell a 25 year old male virgin? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
Yes.
Yes, it has happened. Airman Doors, USAF and I met here and on the old #straightdope IRC channel, then met in person at a Dopefest at Jonathan Chance’s house. We’ve been married for almost 14 years and have one child, who is now old enough to post. :eek:
To answer Wendell’s point, there used to be regular Dopefests, some of them quite large. But over time, people wandered off into other places on the Internet, friendships that thrived here died, and they stopped happening. Also, I think the snark boards had a chilling effect; at least they did for me.
Are there studies that indicate that being single for a year before being put in close proximity with people of the opposite gender for a year, will lead to no hanky-panky going on?
I would expect it to be the opposite.
Just curious. What do you mean by that?
There was a recent “Ask The Escort” thread and, if you read between the lines, you’ll see that she was just trying to get my attention. In fact, I asked that the thread be shut down and it was.
I am not answering for MsRobyn, but I can give a perspective from someone who missed the first five years of SDMB and then lurked for a while before registering in 2005.
I wandered into SDMB in 2004 via a link (Weird Earl’s) from the Straight Dope page, which I had been reading for a few years. I can’t remember exactly how I learned about the snark pit or snack pit or whatever it was I found. I’m sure it was from a mention of it on SDMB.
The pit that I found consisted mostly of threads ragging on people on SDMB. There was even a “field guide” to prominent players on SDMB, detailing their backstories and putting every one of them in an unflattering light. Dope fests were mentioned in these “bios” a lot. All of the posts were anonymous, of course.
If I had been a participant in those dope fests, realizing that anonymous a$$holes were going to make fun of the people there might have discourgaed me from further participation. Then again, it may have encourgaged me to be a bigger fool than I already am. Who knows?
There are strict rules regarding interactions between members of the opposite sex because it is a religious organization. I think the intent is not to prevent hanky panky, but to discourage attachments that might distract the participant while they are on the trip. After all, if I’m busy writing love letters back home, I wouldn’t exactly be able to focus on the trip/experience at hand, would I? The goal is that they want you to bond with the people that you meet on the trip and not be weighed down by any relationships at home.
I’m currently attempting to put one together for Atlanta-area Dopers. So far, only six other posters have expressed interest (though to be fair, I only started the thread a week ago). Last Dopefest I went to, which was probably a decade or so past, had about 15 attendees.
I think it’s mostly Reddit that has put the whammy on boards like this. It’s hard to compete with a behemoth like that.
Growing? Bigger, sure - there has always been bigger boards. But other than the Reddit borg taken as a whole, I’d honestly be surprised if many are growing in a significant way. My understanding was that message boards have entered the obsolescence phase in the world of online social media. They may still pull some weight, but they seem to have begun the long slide towards niche irrelevance ( not necessarily oblivion ) as social habits change.
Could be wrong I guess, but that seems to me the way things are trending.
It’s probably just because I’m an old fart, but I can’t make heads or tails of Reddit. I mean, I can read stuff on it, to a certain extent. But I tried posting something on there once, and I literally couldn’t make any sense out of how to go about it. Do people have conversations on there?’
I believe they do, but I can’t tell you any more because I haven’t really bothered with Reddit enough to figure out exactly how it works. I just know it’s vast and formidable.
Didn’t said child post by special permission when still a baby? So technically, he is already a Doper.
Regards,
Shodan