One doper and I shared a brother. Kind of. I was her brother’s admin assistant. She also lived in the same area (within a few blocks) of where I used to live. I miss her - she was one of my favorite posters.
Back in 2002, I found a doper in the Livejournal comments of one of my non-doper friend’s entries. It was kinda cool.
When I looked through the picture thread, I recognised where the picture of an old poster and former mod was taken. I used to work in that same building. I didn’t know him though…
Another poster’s picture was taken at a campsite I think I’ve been to, outside Rome. I might be wrong, maybe all campsites look the same 
In 2001 or 2002 I made some joke/reference in GD to the Apples/Cedars distinction (Miller v. Schoene). Another Doper picked up on it, and it turned out that not only were we at the same law school–we were in the same section. Hi Gadarene!
There’s a couple of Dopers I know from a club I used to belong to about 20 years ago. I haven’t seen them in ages, but I knew them from what they post about, then we sent some PMs back and forth to confirm. (Can it be that long ago? Wow, time flies.)
You beat me to it!! 
(the posting, I mean, not the dating)
Yep. Right at the bottom in small print, it reads
Ringo’s sister was the first girl I ever kissed
Ha! 
There is a doper who lives very close to me and I thought I saw him one time on the street, but I chickened out asking, because I couldn’t figure out how to word it that didn’t sound insane if the person wasn’t a doper.
There was a Doper who used the same screen name here and on a board specific to our shared profession. I use different names on both. I never made it known to her that I was on both because, well, she was kind of a jerk.
“Do you know Cecil Adams?”
There’s one person who uses his real name and that name was familiar to me from some local activities I used to participate in. After several posts he made mentioning that activity I was able to be 98% sure I knew him. I have yet to identify myself to him but it’s made me wonder if he has had similar thoughts about me.
Every time somebody from my area (or areas I lived in before) posts, I wonder if I have met them before.
I’m not counting the dozen or so I have met at Dopefests. Several of us acknowledge each other when we’re in the same thread, and I have swapped email and PMs with another group that I have never met.
I’ve told this story before on here, but anyway, there was a thread on here about great one-liners you made in person. Hoopy Frood told a story about how one night in college at his dorm’s movie night they’d been watching the Evil Dead trilogy, and he made a joke that got a lot of laughs.
It turns out I was actually in the room when he made the joke. We went to the same college, stayed at the same dorm, and were both at the Evil Dead movie night.
Also, ENugent recognized me on here from our parenting message board (which in one of those “what goes around comes around” coincidences, was a board originally recommended to me by Dopers, almost a decade ago now). I no longer participate there, though I think she does.
I ran a Star Trek board for a while and had several dopes helping me, so i got to know them irl thru e-mails and PMs.
Did several item exchanges with dopers.
Bought a book a doper wrote.
Got cookies (sugar) from a dope.
Met a couple of people irl who had been following my trek board but weren’t dopers.
I like it.
I thought I knew who several posters were. Then I figured out most of the usernames are made up.
Met a good bunch of Dopers at a few NYC Dopefests. Never “ran into” a Doper and realized, HEY !
However, I vacationed a few times in Cape May NJ wearing a SD t shirt on the beach. There was a guy who walked by, turned, stared… really stared, and kept walking. I should have asked if he was a fellow ignorance fighter.
I don’t know if she’s posted here recently, but Mahna Mahna and I were close high school friends and drifted apart and lost touch for ten years.
A few years ago she started posting in the MMP threads and we chatted about food and living in Toronto, and something about her restaurant suggestions and her writing style triggered memories, and I said, in the MMP, “This may sound crazy, but Mahna, is your real name ___? Because it’s me, ___.”
We found we only lived ten minutes from each other and we’ve been in semi-regular touch since then.
I thought it was neat meeting a former friend at a huge messageboard, and it’s been nice getting to know her again.
Yes, and it was quite surprising.
A woman asked for a Portuguese translation for a note to her Brazilian cleaning lady. I noticed her location and the lady’s name and realized she was talking about a close family friend, who happens to also be my wife’s cleaning lady.
A few posts and private emails confirmed the connection. That was cool.
Only way to be cooler is if it was German (Could I be your Reinemachefrau?).