My cool cousin Cazzle would be browsing it and would refer me interesting topics whenever I came up to visit her and MrCazzle. I started reading it, and I’ve been a little more “learn-ed” ever since!
That’s pretty much my story, too. There had been a messageboard-centric area of AOL called “The Exchange” — a virtual subdivision with lots and lots of boards within it — and one day AOL shut it down. I followed one of those front-page links to the dope and soon entered my original post.
I remember a time before push-pins on AOL boards in general but I’ve finally decided I wasn’t on the AOL Straight Dope until after the push-pins (and true threading) arrived.
Started reading the columns in Baltimore’s City Paper in, oh, 1981 or so. That, of course, led me to the books. Once I found the columns online, I started reading them there. Then I started reading Threadspotting. But at the time, I had a new baby, and she kept me too busy for some damned message board. When she was about 2, I finally joined. It was the first message board I ever joined. A proud, proud day it was. Sniff.
I was a youngin, maybe 6-7th grade, and I found the archive online (possibly through bored.com) I don’t remember.
I’ve been a lurker for years. Signed up today! heh.
Brendon
I think I saw a link in the Australian Skeptic website to the main SD site. Was like blood to a vampire. I bought all the books and then started reading the boards.
Have been a dope fiend ever since.
my father surfed on here for years. I would watch him get on it for quite a long time every day and one day I decided that I should follow.
I should go thank him for it.
forgot to say The Surb
I was aware of the books and columns, but as for the board, it’s hard to remember, but I think it was a link from Snopes. I know it was the summer of '99.
I gave it a cursory glance, and posted about the SDMB on a now defunct anti-AOL board. (I used to be a chatroom host :rolleyes: for AOL’s “The HUB” Urban Legends)
SDMB member Soulfrost mentioned the BBQ Pit on that board, saying something like “you will get your ass flamed off in there!” 
and after that I was hooked.
Heavens, I used to host for MSN. Talk about skeletons in the closet (but that was in 98). Thread drift.
Yeah, I hosted in '97 and early '98. A hundred years ago in net time.
And I thought it was something special. Hardly.
I found the Straight Dope through a link on bored.com around 1999. I read the columns for years until, around 2003, I finally visited the board. I immediately loved it and lurked for years before paying up about a year ago. I still mostly lurk but I try to post whenever I have interesting information to share.
I had a conversation with someone about creationism vs evolution. He was very convincing on the creationism side, and I was woefully ignorant on the subject. I did some research and ran across a link to a debate about it in GD.
I signed up, asked my questions, they were answered logically and even friendly! I was hooked, been here ever since, mostly lurking, but posting often enough.
Wow. Thanks everyone for your responses. It’s just amazing to me the diversity of members and the global thirst for knowledge, community and interaction that this board presents. We have so many smart (and smart-ass) people here representing just about every walk of life. We’ve discussed just about every subject from every angle, debated the great philosophical issues and beaten every dead horse around.
Since we seem ready to solve the world’s problems online, why don’t we do it in real life? Let’s start the SDMB party in every country! With the teeming millions running the show, the world would be a better place. And a hell of a lot more entertaining!
No, Albuquerque.
I found it while searching for something. One of the hits was an SDMB post.
A few years ago, I had the site saved in my favorites. I only read the archives, though, and had never checked out the SDMB. I got a new computer last year and promptly forgot about the site.
In May, however, I had neighbors who managed a KFC. They got extra poultry one day and brought over a massive amount of raw, frozen chicken breasts.
I found the site again while searching Google on how to safely cook thawed and refrozen chicken. And this time, I found the SDMB.
When I first got online in late 1997 I was spending all my time on a comic book forum called www.wizardworld.com where I was going by the Username WEREWOLF. Around 1999 or so the moderators at www.wizardworld.com started getting increasingly draconian and I decided to find other message boards using the UBB format to hang out at. I found about a dozen or so I liked, and the SDMB, weirdly, was one of those.
OK, now I feel really, really old.
When I finished college and moved to Chicago, I briefly worked for some women who owned a clothing store (“Presence”…does the store still exist?)…at any rate, one day a guy came in and talked me into convincing the owner to advertise in some new rag called, “Chicago Reader”…she agreed, and I helped design the ad.
I kept reading the Reader, and liked The Straight Dope.
A hundred years later, when I moved back from Europe to California, I had a question and remembered The Straight Dope and found them on the Internet. I sent my question and, BOOM, they actually printed my question (with a nice cartoon) and when I went to read it, I discovered there was a message board…the rest is history.
Once I was researching more efficient methods of transporting small livestock*, and a HotBot search turned up this gem:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=41020
I’ve been an addict ever since.
And they told me that Dope makes you stupid… Pffffft.
[size=1]*Truthfully, I really have no idea how I stumbled across it.
One day I’ll learn to do that cool ‘coding’ stuff. :rolleyes: