I’m so curious. I’m pretty addicted- such great topics, and the responses all seem to be amusing and smart. Wait, let me rephrase- hilarious and brilliant. What is this place? What have I stumbled upon? Every response is ridiculously informed and well written and freaking… funny. I am definitely some type of imposter- it’s a miracle I figured out how to start a post, probably I actually didn’t and this will never appear.
I’ve never seen a misspelled word or clumsy sentence or ignorant statement… not sure how it’s possible. Each sentence seems expertly crafted. I am definitely the dumbest person in the room but damnit I’m not leaving. Equally intimidated and intrigued.
So, do you mean how do we find it, like how did you find a dinner (good or bad) or how we stumbled upon it?
If the latter, someone in the talk.origins newsgroup mentioned the Dope as a place where intelligent discussions were happening. I was getting swamped by netnews, so I gave it a try, and found they were right. Been here ever since, well over 20 years.
I found it due to my interest in reading The Straight Dope books way back when.
Just had to Google what they were… so cool!
I was searching for something about pigeons, and found a dope thread on why pigeons walk and sparrows hop.
I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled on the discussion of the show Heroes during the first season. Perhaps it was “stumble upon”… anyone remember that Digg precursor? But I’ve been here ever since.
I was a long time reader of the column online (like 20 ish years) and always saw at the bottom of the webpage the “threadspotting” and links to the the SDMB. So around 8-9 years ago I’d click on those as well as the few “regular columns”. And during feeling trapped during Covid, especially with the transition to Discourse (which I knew seemed largely immune to the various complaints about vB I kept seeing) I decided to participate.
Years and years ago, I used the mens room at JFK Airport, and there was a “fly” printed on the porcelain in the urinal. I looked that up when I got home, and it led to a SD article, which in turn led to the message board.
I had read the books and watched the TV show. Some years later, I was going through a vegetarian phase, and saw a mention of the Straight Dope on a site called Vegan Porn. I hopped on over here, lurked for a while, and now ya can’t get rid of me.
In 1975, a few days before the bombing of the U.S. State Department headquarters in Washington DC, a group of armed men broke into my family’s house, binding my family in ropes and taking me to raise in their cult.
I was raised as a kind of Manchurian Candidate, with orders to live a very mundane life but to await important orders that would or would not – at some point – come.
During COVID, I got my remit. I was to come to this website as a sort of an anti- agent provocateur, making others look smarter for my presence.
My handlers ‘calibrate’ me from time to time, pointing me toward certain topics and feeding me material they’d like me to post.
I’d give anything for real autonomy, but … this is my lot in life. At least, for now.
There was an CADD instructor (SDRC Ideas) that came into our office in the late 90’s and showed me how to get on this message board thing and get answers to off the wall questions. I lurked around for a couple of years and signed up under a now forgotten user name, having only actually postedless than a dozen times. Then in I signed up and started participating on a regular basis in about 2004. Damn, its been 20 years next month. Where did time go? Where did my hair go?
I was doing a Google search on the effect of extreme cold on the human body. One of the hits was a Dope thread, and I was impressed by the high depth and detail of the discussion, and decided to join. This was 2014.
I read the books back in I think the '88-'89 window as a roommate had a couple of them. When I discovered Usenet, back in '91-'92, I started participating in alt.fan.cecil-adams and alt.folklore.urban. Somewhere in the '99 or 2000 range, I saw discussion of this ‘new’ message board thing and here I am.
Difficult confession: I suspect but do not clearly remember that had a different username my first year here, one that I lost access to when I changed jobs in 2001. I may be a long-running sock at this point.
Welcome, deneen!
Oh, I have. And have occasionally myself produced each of the above.
This is a good place to come to have one’s ignorant statements pointed out, however; often (though not always) politely, and often with better information provided.
I’m not entirely certain; but I think I found these boards through the now-defunct snopes message boards; IIRC at some point when those boards were fading but still somewhat active there was a thread about what other boards people had found that seemed worth joining. I lurked briefly, then when the snopes boards died lurked seriously for IIRC a couple of months before joining.
I needed some place where people were talking about just about everything, mostly without getting mad at each other; and where “cite please” was considered a reasonable thing to say.
– oh. IIRC is If I Recall Correctly. We have a batch of common acronyms, some of them also common elsewhere, some not. You’ll figure it out. I think there might be an old list someplace.
And I have never read the books; or any of the columns except through this board. The columns (aside from a brief partial revival) were over before I joined.
Same here.
Wanted to know what happens to Shane at the end of Shane. Got pointed to this site.
I think I first heard of the Dope in a magazine that had an article listing the top 50/100/whatever websites you should check out, or something similar to that. Would’ve been back in 2000-2003, or around then. Back when the internet was starting to properly take off but not anywhere near how it is today and it was probably still considered a bit nerdy if you ‘socialised’ on it (nowadays it seems the opposite is true!). Long time lurker without posting and then finally took the plunge many years later.
Back in the mists of time, Cecil Adams’ The Straight Dope column appeared in various alternative weeklies. I started reading it in the D.C. City Paper probably in the late 1970s.
So sometime in early to mid 1999, I looked up the column on the Web, and as a result found the message board, which had only started up just months earlier. Been here ever since, although I’ve been more off-and-on for the past few years.
Stumbled upon it in grad school some 20 (mumble mumble) years ago.
I was walking the dinosaur one day, trying to think of things I could search for when my dial up speed finally exceeded 2 kbps. I thought of the 3 books sitting next to the toilet, and found my way to “free” columns online. Took me a while to notice the link to something called a “message board”.