“Drivel”?
The annoying cameraman, the giggling BDJ, the occasional gross-out recipe? I thought that most of the posts pretty well captured the “feel” of an episode of Iron Chef. Which, I thought, was the whole point of the thread.
Fenris
I’m a newbie myself and I tend to agree with the OP for one reason. The board gets really slow and sluggish. The recent threadkillers post got out of control, and while I DID choose NOT to click on it, it still slowed down the board.
Some arguments such as the fiery “FAT PEOPLE” thread, end up REQUIRING six pages of debate, but I think something like threadkillers is kind of…odd. But that may be because I’m new here and I’m missing a lot of the inside jokes and relationships.
I’m nearing 100 posts, I didn’t even know I was SUPPOSED to throw myself a party. Considering how many people are up there over 2000, it seems kind of insignificant. I hope to make friends on this board, and to make Coldfire fall in love with me one day, but until then, I’ll just sit in the background and hope my posts determine my personality, not throw my personality out there for everyone to digest.
jarbaby
I was a poster ahead of my time:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=4649
Don’t let anyone tell you that this kind of stuff is a recent problem…
We just ran out of things to talk to you about Krispy.
What goes around comes around, I guess:D
Maybe your thread can have one more day in the sun 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=32213
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=44551
Twisty: at least he didn’t link to any thread about soccer. And I actually agree with him on this one, scary enough as it is. Not that I would devote a Pit thread to it, mind you, I’d just skip the posts (often: posters) that don’t interest me.
Oh, crap. Now I see LA King bumped the fucking thread. What the hell was that for?
You just did. 
And if you promise to skip the post count party - I can hook you up with naked pics of any poster on the board…
whap
Hey! who threw that??
SAYYYYYY!!! See everyone? Self restraint brings great reward!
I’ll send you my list kelli!
jarbaby
Amen, Zette.
I’m sure some of the old AOL’ers here had the same feeling when people of “my generation” joined the SDMB (late 1999, with a name change in there).
But many of the changes for the worse that I percieve seem to coincide with the massive influx of new folks in the Spring of 2000, that never seemed to let up. I would tend to attribute that to the bored.com link as well.
This should not be construed as newbie-bashing. Newbies are, and always have been, the lifesblood of this place. The SDMB dynamic doesn’t exist without them.
But somewhere along the way, a lot of people seemed to start coming here who don’t have a clue who Cecil Adams is. There is little intelligence, wit, irony, sarcasm in anything they have to say.
What they write looks like it could be cut-and-pasted from any other lame message board out there in cyberspace.
To me, that’s a shame.
P.S. magdalene - And I was just getting ready to write you bad poetry, devote 4 or 5 threads to you and add you to my new sig line that I will make longer than my willie.
You had to go and ruin it.
I think I ran out of stuff to talk about in June of '99.
-Katy
Promises, promises.
Suggested new sig for Milossarian:
“And thanks to magdalene, SaxFace, boli, and countless others who think that sigs like this are lame. Thanks to everyone on the board who has ever mentioned my name. Can’t forget the divine evilbeth, who once flirted with me in this thread. Anyone having erotic dreams about me should just send me an email, pictures, and an address where you can be stalked.”
Remember, it is the QUALITY of posts, not the QUANTITY. I never could understand those who don’t get this concept.
I am really starting to miss the old AOL days when I could read the entire board in less than an hour.
As some of you know, this member of “the massive influx of new folks in the Spring of 2000” likes newbies, tries to support newbies, and has even welcomed a few who didn’t happen to respond, so I won’t be doing THAT anymore.
Anyway, yeah, there sure seem to be a lot of them. And I have trouble keeping track of them. And the constant turnover of monumentally pointless threads makes MPSIMS pretty boring sometimes. And I, personally, couldn’t care less about fests removed from me by more than twenty miles. But the vitality it shows is interesting. As long as nobody mentions soccer.
How do u open a swatch
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55795
Can you smell exotic dancers when they’re close?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55684
smelly???
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55793
Did KFC’s name change because they stopped using real chicken? (posted by “Clucky”)
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=55762
Oh, and this is all in GQ. It seems that the Straight Dope used to attract a crowd of intelligent people who actually were Cecil fans and read the column. Now that the site is advertised on Bored.com, there seems to be an influx of people who not only have nothing (or little) to contribute, but that are here just to be annoying.
One more thing- when some brand new poster asks a sex question (like- “doing it in the ass, love it or hate it”) have enough damned sense to see that it is likely either someone underage (probably) or some freakin’ pervert that just wants to read about your sex life. DFTT
Zette
It’s kind of weird. I’m a new poster but was a lurker for a while. (For the record, it was the Cecil Adams column that got me here, I only discovered the message board months later.) When I finally signed up, it was sort of like deciding to go to a party with all these poeple I’d been hearing about for so long. I was really looking forward to mingling. But now that I’m at the party, there are so many people at it that I’m a little overwhelmed. I can’t complain because I’m a newbie like so many others, and it is a cool board, it’s just a little crowded and I do better in small groups. A lot of posts seem to just have a “look at me” type of vibe, and I don’t find that particularly intersting. It takes so long to load a page that I don’t want to click on just anything, so lately I haven’t been reading as many posts as usual and responding to even less. Oh well. :\
I saw those topics today and thought “what the hell?” SMELLING EXOTIC DANCERS? Kids, it’s so easy to get into the porn sites. When they say are you 18, click the box that says yes.
Also for the record, I’ve been reading Straight Dope since I was about sixteen (sweet merciful crap, that’s 12 years ago!), and I’ve read all the books about five times. I came to the boards because I was searching for an answer to “what makes a schnapps a schnapps.”
jarbaby
There are two very different points being made here. The first is how the use of the board is affecting the server and the second seems to be bitching about threads you don’t like, or used to like when you were new, but no longer like because it has been done before.
If it is bad for the board software and hard on the board hardware, then it’s bad for the board, period.
If certain threads annoy you because it has been done already-- well, you know the answer to that-- don’t read the stupid thread. The regs here seem to be saying “We’ve already done it so it shouldn’t be done anymore.” or “I don’t find that interesting, so it shouldn’t be done.”
The one bitch that I have with the newbies (those High Schoolers who all seem to live in one big house) is the way they will take over a thread that has nothing to do with them and turn it into a personal telephone conversation. Oh well, one more thread I don’t need to open anymore.
I agree, in spirit, with the OP. This is the very reason I’ve slowed down my posting, and I’m considering going back into ultra-lurk mode, essentially never posting unless it’s in GQ or GD. MPSIMS and IMHO have gotten just a mite too mindless for my tastes. Like Zette said, even GQ, the SDMB centerpiece, is getting dumbed down by some really stupid questions. Maybe it’s a passing phase, but it seems to be getting worse to me. I know I’m not a long-time poster, but I remember being attracted to these boards because even the mundane, pointless stuff was intelligent (or so it seemed at the time.)
So Dopers, on that note, I believe I’ll take a bit of a vacation. I may see you in GD or GQ, but not for a while. I’m MPSIMS’ed out. See you guys around.
Quite to the contrary Coldie. Mr. Cynical’s evil twin thread has been more popular than I ever imagined. My desire for revenge is long past. It will be many weeks before all of the evil twins are identified. I find it hilarious that if he had just played along with the first thread he would have gotten off so much easier. Go figure.
What I was trying to point out is that these “Me Too” threads are so much more popular than ones that need a little thought. I just find that to be ironic at a board populated by so many intelligent people.
And Fenris, please do not take what I said to heart. You made one of the better efforts in the SD IC thread.
I’m getting ready to launch another thread that will spotlight one of our favorite posters at these boards. I’m just ironing out the wrinkles before starting it. One thing that I will add, although I’m guilty of starting a few post count party threads, I’m glad to say that I have usually built these threads around various gifts to the boards. I try to balance the mundane with a little utility.
Most of what’s being said here about subject and content is totally spot on!