# How did you find The Straight Dope? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 15, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859 "2016-05-15T17:39:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/21 "2016-05-15T19:35:16Z")
Someone on at the Bronze - the Buffy the Vampire Slayer message board - used “Fighting Ignorance Since 1997” (The year Buffy first aired) as her signature. I googled “Fighting Ignorance since” and was led to the front page. StG ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/22 "2016-05-15T19:43:02Z")
Living in Chicago, 1983. Read the column, bought the book. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/23 "2016-05-15T19:47:11Z")
I remember that it was a column in the Denver free paper back in the '80s when I was at the university there. (_Westword_?, IIRC, was the paper’s name). And I ran into it again in the '90s in the DC-area free paper when I used to ride the Metro into town for work. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/24 "2016-05-15T19:50:17Z")
One of my kids brought home a copy of the alternative Montreal Mirror and I discovered it there. After that I made sure to get a copy every week, until the Mirror dropped it, no explanation. This would have been in the early 80s. Then when the I-net started I searched hoping the weekly column might be available online. Instead I discovered TSD **and** the weekly column. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/25 "2016-05-15T19:51:01Z")
I discovered Cecil when the first Straight Dope book came out in paperback, May 1986. Browsing in the bookstore (either Pickwick or B. Dalton, in San Diego), it caught my eye. Bought it, loved it, watched and waited for the sequels, read each of them 2-3 times, and still have them all. I “got into” computers in 1993, and not too long afterward discovered the Straight Dope usenet site. Had a look-see every so often, and once the website we know and love arrived, I became a dedicated lurker until finally joining as a guest in 2008. Began paying the token membership fees a couple of years ago, should have done it sooner. [SIZE=“1”] My favorite Beatle is George. Since 1964. ---
**Author:** ![somepumpkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@somepumpkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/somepumpkin)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/26 "2016-05-15T19:51:28Z")
Cecil’s column ran in one of Raleigh NC’s long-lost, weekly newspapers, _The Spectator_. I remember reading my first one in the early nineties. ---
**Author:** ![NeonMadman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58f4c7/32.png) [@NeonMadman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NeonMadman)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/27 "2016-05-15T20:35:47Z")
In the 1970s, the column ran in an alternative newspaper in the Springfield, Massachusetts area called the _Valley Advocate_. That was where I first read it, but it was many years after that before I encountered it elsewhere or ran into the books. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/28 "2016-05-15T20:50:03Z")
Around 1986, my friend Matthew and I were on the trivia team and high school newspaper staff together. He found the paperback at the library, and we used it to dig up trivia and to borrow ideas for newspaper columns. (We didn’t plagiarize, but we did use the column as a jumping off point for more teen-centric questions and answers.) By the time I was in college, in 1987, the column was printed in at least one of the local alternative newspapers, so I read it most weeks. ---
**Author:** ![PoppaSan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/poppasan/32/189_2.png) [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/29 "2016-05-15T21:36:18Z")
Stumbled upon the books in the early(?) 80’s. Recalled the name and went looking for this site about a decade ago. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/30 "2016-05-15T21:39:28Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > It was in the _L.A. Reader_, which I read regularly when I lived there. Same here. Fall semester, 84. ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/31 "2016-05-15T21:42:16Z")
Columns in the Dallas Observer weekly, late 80s-early 90s. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/32 "2016-05-15T21:51:57Z")
Another reader from the free alt-weeklies – _City Paper_, Baltimore, 1980/81, got hooked pretty fast (the Baltimore _City Paper_ no longer carries the column). ---
**Author:** ![HeatherPA](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heatherpa/32/3072_2.png) [@HeatherPA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeatherPA)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/33 "2016-05-15T22:03:00Z")
Bought the paperback at the Pittsburgh airport in June of 1986. I was 13, almost 14, flying Peoples Express up to Maine to spend the summer with my dad. Been reading the boards since mid / late 90’s. I’m not very talkative. (I used to have a different ID in the early 2000’s, it didn’t have many posts either) ---
**Author:** ![AppallingGael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9bd4f/32.png) [@AppallingGael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AppallingGael)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/34 "2016-05-15T22:43:17Z")
In the 90’s, it ran in the New York Press, a good free weekly paper then (as was the Village Voice, which still prints today but resembles a newspaper only in its physical/chemical composition). ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/35 "2016-05-15T22:44:31Z")
> [@Obeseus](#): > > I saw the column in the Boston Phoenix in the late 1980s. I read the column in the Portland\* Phoenix for 2 or 3 years before I ever got around to looking up the message board. - Maine ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/36 "2016-05-15T22:53:47Z")
Good old [bored.com](http://bored.com) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/37 "2016-05-15T23:11:07Z")
I was linked to the website version on either the Snopes message board or possibly the site proper. I read the column being linked, saw some interesting ones in the side bar, and looked at them. Then I had something I wanted to say about one of them, and having recently found the Snopes message board, I looked for one for this site–and then waited for pay to post to end. By the time I did, I forgot whatever SD article was I wanted to comment on. I think I waited like 3 months. And I came in exactly a month before P2P went away, using the free month of posting. So May or June 2008 when I found the column. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/38 "2016-05-15T23:17:56Z")
This specific [article](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/235/can-you-die-from-picking-your-nose) was on the homepage of AOL one day, I clicked on it and some how made my way to the AOL boards. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2016, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/39 "2016-05-16T00:05:03Z")
Discovered the book somewhere around 1990 or 1991. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2016, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859/40 "2016-05-16T00:17:14Z")
In the school year of 1983-4, I was in a seminary in Chicago. We were right across the street from the University of Chicago. There was a school paper and it carried the Straight Dope. I was hooked on my first column. “Do male pigs have corkscrew shaped penises?” I read it over and over and, without checking, can still recite big chunks of it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-you-find-the-straight-dope/754859.md?page=3)