How many of you have met a fellow Doper purely by accident? No, not at a Dopefest or other organized get together. I’m talking purely by chance. If so, how did this occur?
Did you reach for the same copy of Cat Fancy at the same time in the grocery store?
Saw someone in a SDMB t-shirt? (do those exist?) With a SMBD tie clip? Worse, a moderator with the dreaded coffee mug?
Saw someone reading the Dope at the library?
Stumbled upon each other in a conversation where a Dope meme was mentioned?
Precisely that - I was talking with Wendell Wagner at a convention when in the course of a conversation he mentioned the “What if Tolkien was written by other authors” thread.
I was going to a doper meeting at a pub in Houston. I arrived early and decided to kill some time by shopping for books at a bookstore down the block. As it turned out two of the other dopers (Ringo and Irishman if I recall correctly) who were going to the meeting had the same idea.
Another time I was taking a train down to NYC to go to a doper meeting. At one stop, I noticed a woman getting on and thought “She really looks like Eve.” I asked and it was in fact Eve who was going to the same meeting. I figured this was a much greater coincidence as it was hours before the meeting and we were in another state when we ran into each other.
I saw Queen Tonya when I worked as a cashier at the grocery store. We both live in the same area but I was surprised that she didn’t go to the one closer to her. It took me a few seconds to recognize her at first (Sorry! )
I also saw LOUNE when I was working at Panera. I don’t think he recognized me which is okay since I was embarrassed about working there enough as it is.
Somewhere falling further into the depths of the message board is the ongoing online dating thread. It’s a few thousand posts long. Anyways, I had a question about a particular OKCupid match. Literally, seconds before I was about to post my question in that thread I realized something, the person I had a question about was also active in that thread. I’m glad I figured it out before I asked it. That was the pure happenstance part. We did meet IRL after that.
Curiously, this is EXACTLY what I did. He’s not around much anymore but former mod John Corrado and I both attended a gaming con in DC 10-12 years ago.
We both sat down to play a game and I saw his name tag, which was both his name and his handle.
Me: “Do the words ‘Straight dope message board’ mean anything to you?”
Once I posted a link to a picture of my apartment complex, and someone responded, “Dude, that’s MY apartment complex.” Yes, we lived in the same (very large) complex. He’s long gone from here I think, and I’m long gone from there.
This is pretty cool. I want to meet a Doper IRL just by coincidence. Heck, I may have already met someone like PunditLisa who lives in the Cincinnati area and just not known it.
Yep. I was at a bar and one of the other patrons there who I’m not really friends with but we do chat from time to time was/is a Doper.
He just casually told me about this place. And in return, I didn’t say a damn thing. I’ve dumped way too much emotional garbage here, I’m not completely comfortable being friends with people IRL here.
Ha ha, well yeah. Some of us have more “normal” usernames than others. If I change mine to “Dory” would you be put off if I came up to you and called you Nemo?
Yep, but he doesn’t know it and I haven’t figured out his SDMB handle. A professor at my local college mentioned the Dope several times and even dropped a couple memes in class. But he and I had a contentious relationship and he “borrowed” some of my ideas for a published piece about a James Joyce story. So I never introduced myself, just sat in his class seething and trying to guess at his online ID.
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