I was looking for the reason for a chef’s hat shape, and Yahoo search led me here. Read the archives for a while, then I found Evil Nazi Grounhogs- I was hooked.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m probably getting flamed over at “Lefties!,” so I really should be there. 
My friend told me about how The Straight Dope had lryics to songs, and other cool informational tidbits. So I finally came here about a year after he first told me about it. I found the message boards, and registered for them that day.
oddly enough, though, my friend doesn’t peruse the boards.
I, er, got here by way snopes, which I got to by way of the Left Behind Message Boards.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
I also found it through bored.com, although I took no notice of the fact that there was a message board for the first few months, figuring that all message boards were full of stupid people flirting and not much else. Then I saw Scylla’s threadspotting (I think on instructions for his daughter during diaper changing), read a bunch of other threadspottings, lurked for a couple of months, and finally caved and registered.
Snopes has links to here?
My boss’ son posts here. But he wouldn’t tell me what his posting name is, so I still don’t know, do I Theo Britton?
I checked it out about a year ago when Theo first told me about it, but I didn’t get hooked until recently when I used a search engine to find some info on the female pope, and found Cecil’s piece on the subject.
I used to read it in the early 90’s in the Montreal Mirror until they dropped it.
Then when we got the internet hooked up at home a few years later, I started to read The Skeptic’s Dictionnary. Noticed all the links to Cecil’s columns. I started to read them again, then I started on some Threadspotting. Finally I joined. The rest is up in the air.
In 1997, my now-husband, then-boyfriend (DeathLlama) sent me a link to one of Cecil’s columns that struck him as amusing. We both ended up reading virtually the entire archive before I joined the original AOL board with a shamelessly archive-searchable question: “Why are Grape Nuts called that when they are neither grapes nor nuts?”
While my boyfriend enjoyed reading the columns, he didn’t hop onto the SDMB bandwagon until a couple of years later.
I had been reading his newspaper … article report thingy … for about 6 years and I knew he had a webpage and stuff but never bothered to go to it. I knew I would spend hours there, and yup, that’s what happened. Anyway I found out that there were two Dennis the Menaces created on pretty much the same day, one in the US, the other in UK and I wanted to ask Cecil so I went and found it and instead asked the TM. The rest, as they say, will bore you.
Ditto to detop. Ahh, intelligence in a free weekly paper [zellers ad voice] how do they do it?
I found “The people of Straight Dope” first.
Google was searching for photos of ordinary people [Sorry guys] which I needed for an essay.
Then I got curious where all those people went to.
So, here I am.
I didn’t quite find this board… I was hit in the head in a dark alley with a large cinder block, tied up, and dumped in a cell in the heart of the Great Caverns of Cecil Adams. They fed me left-overs, and once in a while, they brought me out to be hunted by the moderators for sport.
When this board used to be on AOL, I used to always read it along with the urban legend (Leggs Urbana?) page on America Online.
E3
I also got here by way of http://www.bored.com , and after reading the columns on and off for quite awhile, I accidentily clicked Threadspotting… And I was glued to the monitor, watching a half-kidding question get answered with a great degree of accuracy and scientificness. And the rest is just me lurking a long time before posting.
How did I find this place? You told me, fool! Death to the green squirrels!
My armies will conquer the world! (Invading a continent near you)
I read the column in The Austin Chronicle, but I never went to web site until I followed a link from http://www.cruel.com a couple years ago. Then I didn’t bother with the MB until about a year after…
Read the columns.
Bought the books.
Typed it into a browser window.
Actually, now that I think about it, I first checked it out on AOL, briefly.
Strangely enough, I almost never read Cecil himself anymore.
stoid
I first heard about The Straight Dope back in my University days when I picked up Cecil’s first book.
<Fast Forward to the Present>
A co-worker showed me the SD site and was hooked when I realised that it was actually related to that book.
My brother has been talking about it since the mid-80’s.
I just started reading recently. I can’t believe some of the postings! So funny, sad, informative. But, it is a piss poor day you don’t learn something.
The first time I visited ** Drachillix **at his house, he brought up the site to show me all the neat sig lines…and to get me into his bedroom, I suspect.
Thanks, Straight Dope!
I first started back on the AOL site. I was bored as hell one night using the “Random” feature that will throw you to a random page and guess what came up?