In the SDMB. I’ve always wondered about these sort of things and I´m sure this question has been asked before (what queston hasn’t been asked here before?) but, it didnt’ come up in any search.
As for me, I ended up here after following a link in www.urbanlegends.about.com that quoted Cecil Adams in some debunking article. After reading some of the questions in the archives (I read the answers too, in case you’re wondering), I went into the Message Boards and have been happily lurking ever since.
My dad had a question about the temperature of metal. I recalled reading one of Cecil’s columns online once–I have no idea how I got the link. I believe I was trying to debunk one of those annoying damn forwards and googled for the answer. Anyway, I emailed the 'dope about it, and one of the “advisory board” members emailed back suggesting I post the question on the Board. And thus began my rapid descent into insanity. When I show up at the post office, naked, painted like a basketball and brandishing a giant sharpened spoon, they’ll have someplace to point the blame to…
I’ve been aware of the column for more than a decade. At one point I was thinking of correcting some elitist asshat’s pronunciation of “Porche,” and I wanted to get the straight dope before doing something stupid.
I wandered in from a link to the Dope from The Skeptic’s Dictionary. Checked out Threadspotting a couple of times, and then I was hooked. Lurked for about a year before I actually registered, though.
Where am I anyways?
One drunken night looking for an answer on some dumb topic we were discussing in the bar that night.
I use to come here all the time about 2 years ago, but forgot my password. :smack:
Had new Internet service so, I could not retrieve the old name and password.
some one used one of cecil’s articles for a referance in the barshare forum, and well this lead me to reading his articles. and then to the message board.
Been reading Cecil’s column for years in a local tabloid, and very much enjoyed the TV show. I miss it. It was good stuff.
One day, it occurred to me that there was a web address in the text of the article. Normally, I avoid web addies in stuff I think of as “products,” since their web sites are really nothing more than advertising.
…but I got curious. Hey, you can access old SD columns here!
I got in the habit of checking in once or twice a week. One day, I noticed there seemed to be a message board.
Been here ever since, pretty much, with the occasional hiatus.
I bought and eagerly read all the compilation books that Cecil put out:The Straight Dope, Return of the Straight Dope, More of the Straight Dope, the Straight Dope That Devoured Cleveland{figure out the joke in the last made-up title, and admit you’re at least 50} Didn’t get a computer 'til November 2002, and tried to get on. Took me almost a year to do so. Glad I persevered. I like everything, the good, bad and ugly, the sublime and the ridiculous, and the denizens that keep it going. Never started a thread, except to introduce myself. Too much fun just lurking and trying to absorb it all. Is that possible, or wise?
A friend of mine in high school found it somehow, and got into it, telling me about the eclectic and insightful discussions, and the ‘World’s Smartest Man’. Then he started a thread about determinism and fate. It wasn’t going quite the way he had been hoping, so he showed it to me on the school computers at lunch, and asked me to sign up and post my thoughts. Nervous and shy, I was too afraid to do so. I was terrified of people finding out what I was thinking, of getting to know me. Immobilized by apprehension, I refused his request.
But I felt bad about it, and recognized that my policy of iconoclasm was preventing me from being a proper friend. The guilt of letting him down and the desire to design an attitute towards life that wouldn’t arbitraily limit my competencies (such as the ability to form functional friendships with real people) led me to sign up when I got home that evening, and to imediately make my first post, which of course was to his fate thread.
I’ve been reading the boards a lot ever since, though my posting history is less consistent.
