No, this is not me asking my mom how she located my stash.
What or who first let you know about the existence of the SDMB?
As for myself, I was scouring the web to find the answer to a question that had been bothering me for literally years. I happened on the Dope, and it was answered quite quickly. Thanks to Colophon, I found my answer and a new favorite web site.
How about you?
I actually found this place way back in in the day, on AOL. I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled across it, but I used to spend a lot of time on the mini-pseudo websites AOL had (has? I don’t use it anymore), like the Star Trek ones. I was only 13 at the time, so I didn’t do much more than browse the little brain graphic that represented the archive of Cecil’s answers on various subjects, but the name stuck and I joined the message board a couple of years later.
A long time ago, when I was about ten, I was putzing around on bored.com and found a link to the dope… looked over it and somehow didn’t find it that interesting. I didn’t do much investigating.
Later, I had exhausted the supply of books in the shelves upstairs and went to the basement to look over the old or water damaged books and came across a Straight Dope book. I devoured it, loved it, and remembered the link, so I looked it up.
After a while, I’d read all (or all that I wanted) of the columns on the page and still wanted more, so I hung around reading GQ for a while.
Later, I started reading the other forums, but couldn’t post until I was at least 13 and couldn’t post until I had a way to pay. When I got a job and a bank account and was old enough, I signed up.
I did an Internet search for info on the song Levon by Elton John, and it brought me to a column by Cecil Adams. I read a lot of the columns and eventually found my way to the message board.
I found the Dope by answering questions from my daughter. Google leads to the articles by Cecil in the archive and after the 3rd question got answered better by Cecil than anywhere else in a 2 week period, I started reading all the archive. I ignored the Message Board at first, because I found most message boards to be inane, juvenile or filled with little dweebs asking where the hot woman are.
Then I clicked on a Threadspotting link and found the SDMB. I joined within a week I think. I have very eclectic interests and this board sucked me in big time.
Jim
I was watching a TV show (history channel, I think) about the guillotine (sp?) and some of the claims in the show made me make this face more than once --> :dubious:
So, after the show was over I hopped online to see what I could dig up, which led me to Cecil’s article on decapitation. I got hooked on Cecil’s articles pretty much immediately, but it took me a long time to warm up to the message boards. If the boards had been pay back then, I wouldn’t have joined. My guest subscription would have expired long before I decided to stay. Eventually I did start jumping into a few GQ discussions. At first, I stayed in GQ and never even read the other forums, but then I slowly branched out and now I read MPSIMS and IMHO pretty regularly, and occasionally go into other forums, though I do still stay out of GD and the pit.
By the time the board went pay, I was hooked. The dope was part of my lunch time routine (and coincidentally, I’m posting this at lunch too) and I check the dope at least a couple of times a day on average. I’ve met a lot of folks here, some that I’ve actually met face to face, and a lot more that I know only by their user ID.
A day without the dope now just doesn’t feel right.
I read the book “The Straight Dope” back in the mid 80’s, before it even went online at AOL. I followed the column avidly in my local alternative newspaper for years, and was frustrated as hell when they stopped carrying it in 1999. I immediately used my nascent search skills on the internet, and Lo! found this site, where it had recently relocated to from AOL. I began to follow the columns regularly online then.
I also browsed the message board, but didn’t sign up for board membership until about 6 months later or so, thus depriving myself of “99er” status. 
It’s just as well, I guess. If I had signed up as soon as I had found the board, I probably wouldn’t have used the cool name I later selected when I did sign up.
I think I got here through Snopes, for some reason. I used to be a regular poster over there for a year or two, and I think someone mentioned the Dope one day. Since I was working a receptionist job that required nothing but surfing the web for eight hours a day, I needed somewhere new to read. So I found the Dope.
E.
I started reading the Straight Dope in one of the weekly free papers years ago. Came across it again a while back and saw there was a website, that led to reading all the online articles by Uncle Cece which in turn led to the SDMB.
This’ll betray my mouldy old age, but I picked up a “Straight Dope” book of Cecil’s back in the mid '80’s (before marriage and kids) when I lived in Portland, OR and used the city transit a great deal, thus needing to have something entertaining to read on me at all times. Probably even picked it up at Powell’s Books! I was delighted, moreso by Cecil’s wit than by the questions posed in the book, or even the theme, which was apparently to debunk urban legends and other ancient ridiculous folklore. I found the website a couple years ago when recalling that book to someone else, and wondering if there was NOW an associated website…and here I am! Lurked a good 20+ months on the Boards after reading nearly every single word on every other section of the website. Now I’m posting, and having my heroes like Tomndeb, Silenus and others respond…somebody pinch me! This is just too cool!
–Beck
I followed a link from an alternative newsweekly’s website.
Ask Yahoo!, sometime in 2000.
I honestly don’t remember. I think I found it through another message board (which I can’t remember now). I remember where I was working when I joined, though, because it was the impetus of being completely bored at a job where I had too little to do that drove me to find something to read on the internet.
My local alterna-paper carries the column and a friend had one of the books. I think I may have browsed around back when the Dope was on AOL too but I really don’t remember. After a column on same-sex marriage I wanted to respond so I went to the address printed in the column.
I was reading either talk.origins or alt.atheism, and someone mentioned a good discussion on evolution going on here. I came over to visit and was impressed by the caliber of the discussion, and that the volume was more manageable.
My good friend ellis555, dearly departed from the Dope, but graduating med school this spring (congrats!) directed me here. I got a link in an e-mail with “you might find this site interesting” or somesuch. Six years later I’m still here.
I found it on AOL after reading the books in my local library. I’ve been on the message board since then.
I started reading the column in The City Paper, an alternative weekly in Baltimore, sometime in the late 70s. I bought a few books, continued reading the column. Then when I moved to Ohio in 2000, I did a Yahoo search for The Straight Dope and found the site. Threadspotting led me to a few years (I’m not kidding) of lurking before I finally paid up in June 2005.
I had read the column in the paper and read one of the books (I think I bought it for myself). So one day I had finished with The Onion and Snopes for the day and googled The Straight Dope to see if any columns were on-line. Viola.
A friend loaned me three or four of the books. In March or April of '99 I was having a grand time finding web sites by typing in www.<company/concept/movie title>.com. It occurred to me to try www.straightdope.com. I read through all of the archives over the course of a few days, and then every Friday. Knew there was a message board, but wasn’t really interested in checking it out. Got dragged in around February/March of 2000 by something in Threadspotting - don’t even remember what. Lurked for a few weeks, then said “fuggit.” And now I am the fine, upstanding citizen you see before you today.