I was listening to a hidden track on the Robbie Williams album “Escapology” that opened with the line “Is the Richard Gere gerbil story true?”
Not being from the USA (and probably born a bit too late as well) I didn’t know what that was referring to, so I googled “Richard Gere gerbil”. :eek:
The Wikipedia entry on Gerbil stuffing had a link to this awesome Cecil column, which made me read pretty much every column in the list.
One day I checked out the forums, and not even 5 years later, I signed up. Thank you, Uncle Cecil!
From Snopes to the Snopes messageboard to someone quoting Cecil as a source to me wanting to ask Cecil a question about something he said, but not wanting to only have a month long posting career, to me lurking until I heard about going free to post, to subscribing with one month left in order to try to be the first free-to-post Guest.
ETA: So option 1.
Also, I got to Snopes from googling about Mr. Ed being a zebra.
A friend linked me to Cecil’s columns, years ago, when one was relevant to a topic we were discussing (I don’t recall which one). I lurked for ages, and still mostly lurk. I like to read, and it keeps me amused at work during downtime.
This. A friend sent the blimp thread and a few others by Master Wangka(sp?) and I was hooked.
I wonder if there is a single doper who is responsible for more people joining than Scylla. IIRC in previous threads similar to this one several others have reported that the blimp thread was their way in.
Looking for an answer to “wetter if you walk or run in the rain” I found Cecil’s answer and discovered the boards. I didn’t join until someone asked about advice giving up smoking. Since I had managed it effortlessly thanks to a book, I decided I had to share the tip.
I knew about the column back when I found some Straight Dope books around 2001. Then, when I found the Web site online, I recognized its name from the column and books.
I started visiting the boards regularly around 2005 or so, but I didn’t join for years later.
I was googling a purportedly-true haunting and found an article in straightdope.com debunking it. I then started reading the other archived articles. That occupied me for a few months. I would then regularly check the site for new articles. One day when there was no new article, I decided to check out the threadspotting link and a whole new world was discovered by yours truly.
I had read the books and even seen the TV show, but it didn’t occur to me to look online… At the time, I was a vegetarian and used to read a site called Vegan Porn, which had a link that led me here.
I had a friend who used to know a lot of trivia one day I asked him where he got it all from, it was about Heinz 57 and he admitted to using the Straightdope columns and told me about the board. A couple of months later I had an internship and was bored so I decided to look up some trivia. I think I signed up near the end of the summer of '04 but then I went back to school and mainly lurked on and off until I got a full time office job in '07 by that point I forgot whether or not I signed up so I (re)joined under my current name.
Picked up the first book ages ago, and enjoyed it. So I subscribed to alt.fan.cecil-adams. Then I got a job, left school, and stopped following usenet so closely. Years later, wondered if this new WWW thing might have something akin to the old usenet group, and googled, probably using AltaVista, to find the SDMB.
Yay! I’m the first person to mention The Straight Dope TV show, which was on the A&E network and starred comedian Mark Lukas, back in the late '90s. That show led me to the website, where I lurked a couple years before joining.
I wasn’t lead here by him, but my obsession with tracking down and reading every one of Sampiro’s threads about his family was what kept me coming back
I heard about the SDMB first on a “tell me your funny sites to read” thread of the day on Shakesville, last November or December, read through the archives for a while, then signed up in January this year.
FWIW, the particular thread recommended was Qadgop the Mercotan’s one about urethra stuffers!
A friend told me about the books way back in the late 80s. That was before I had even heard of the Internet, if it even existed. I had just started using email, for heaven’s sake. From the books I found a local paper that carried the column. Eventually I found this website.
