I was looking for the meaning of “antidisestablishmentarianism” one day, and the search engine produced one of the Straight Dope questions (What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean?), answered by SDSTAFF Dogster and Ian. I then started looking through the site and looked at the messageboard.
Me too.
[sub]I didn’t even know there was a messageboard here until a couple of hours before I signed up. I was browsing through the Threadspotting archive, having exhausted the rest of the Archives, and Fenris’s Used Soul Appraisals interested me so much I signed up on the spot. And now that I’ve wasted- ah, used up about half my waking time every day on this site since then, I don’t know whether to thank him or to curse him… 
:D[/sub]
I was a faithful reader of the SD column in my local paper (though it’s now been discontinued there), so when I moved to England for a year, I went online to catch up on the articles I was missing. Eventually I joined the SDMB, so if you look at my earliest posts, most of them have to do with England.
I followed one of Guinastasia’s links from customerssuck. And stuck around. Today I even started a thread. Whee!
I couldn’t remember when/where I found SDMB until I read that.
I found the SDMB link on www.bored.com. I found www.bored.com by typing ‘bored’ into altavista. No prizes for guessing why I typed ‘bored’ into altavista.
I followed a link of Tengu’s on the snopes board to a thread in the BBQ Pit, became a Pit lurker, spent months controlling myself (“You can’t register, you’ll never get any work done! Plus, they’ll flame you into a weeping puddle on the floor!”) but eventually I caved and registered.
I think I’m doing quite well, with only 45 posts in one month…
I was referred!
Spider Woman sucked me in.
And I wanted to find out what was more important than sex.
[sub]priorities have since been rectified[/sub]
I found the original Straight Dope book in a bookstore while I was out of town on business in about 1992. Read it that night and bought the second one as soon as I could find it, then bought the rest as they became available.
I was cruising around AOL in early ’97 or thereabouts, and there was a link to the Straight Dope site (which was on AOL exclusively at that time). I think it had started only very recently, because Ed was the only moderator. A month or so later, Jane became the first board Goddess, followed fairly shortly by Tuba, then Jill, Euty, and Lynn (I confess I don’t remember the exact order after Tuba).
When Unca Cece et al. left AOL and went to web, I came along. I don’t post a bunch, but I’m a longtime loyal doper.
Ugly
I was reading one of Jan Brunveld’s (sp?) books about urban legends, and he talked about the SD quite a bit. I went here and read almost everything in the archives, then discovered the message boards. My first post was the Babel Fish story from HHGTTG in a thread about the existence of God.
At work, Googling 3 little pigs for an image of the wolf attempting to blow down the brick house and came accross a personal webpage of a doper who had a link to the message board.
I don’t know who she was but if memory serves me, her site also included
- A joke about guinea pigs mowing down the big bad wolf,
- A picture of a 3 screen movie theater marquee that read “Erin Brockovich” “Screwed” “My Dog Skip” and
- A Main St type intersection that read Banger and Leaver.
My freshman year roommate introduced me to the Dope back in 1986. I read in one of the Twin Cities freebies, then in the New York Press when I started law school. I actually joined, but almost never posted, to the AOL site - IIRC they included it in their New Features area or some such thing. I started reading it on the Web pretty quickly, but didn’t re-join the SDMB until a fair time later - and then lurked for at least a year.
I started reading the Straight Dope and eventually stumbled upon the Message Board and, after some months, chose to sign up.
skerri sent me the link after I inquired what was keeping distracting her from my instant messages one day last year. I finally decided to join after she responded (time after time) “posting on the MB” to my “what are you up to?” queries.
Another convert of Guinastasia here. We met at another board and she suggested this one had waaaaaaaaay more sex appeal. I was also amused by the “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973. (It’s taking longer than we thought.)” slogan.
She failed to mention that it had all the trapping power of a massive black hole, however.
Must. Leave. Apartment. Growing. Pale. And. Flabby. No. Social. Life.
I found it while doing a search on articles about Halloween.
I followed Guinastasia over from another message board, www.customerssuck.com . I was a fan of her posts over there, and when she recommended this site, I just had to come check it out. And I have been hooked ever since!
(Aside to Guin…you and su_carbs were the BEST over there!)
I found it on AOL’s keyword list when this had an AOL keyword. Maybe it still does. I don’t care.
I followed a link from the best website ever.
These guys did AM radion in New Orleans, now they are in Houston area. They had this as a link and now I am hopelessly addicted.
I was bored one day, and grumbling about how the local papers didn’t carry the wholesome goodness that is The Straight Dope. So, I decided to take a chance that www.straightdope.com wasn’t a porn site and tapped it into my browser… and voila. 
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