Curious what forces led everyone here. I assume contact info at the end of Straight Dope columns is a big one. I had never absorbed those lines when reading it in a local paper.
Me, you ask? I was surfing info about the glycemic index and up came a Straight Dope column I had missed. (Remember that great face off? Anyone know what happened to Jennygirb-or something like that-? Looks like she vaporized in short order, even after having been quite validated and encouraged by high powers…)
I got directed here a year and a half ago by my other half, Alex B, who had no idea I would like it so much that my post count would overlap his by about 2000. Rar.
He found this place via bored.com.
I found the straight dope while looking for Joe Bob Briggs goes to the drive in, and was instantly hooked. I found it online at AOL, but since I didnt have an AOL account, I only got to check in when I was over at my dads house.
I got here from the cough Left Behind Message Boards. I was a regular over there, then a link to here got posted at one point. I liked it here better. 
Wow. I don’t even remember. Hmm.
I discovered it on AOL and lurked and followed them here to lurk some more before I registered.
I used to get trivia mailings. One of them had a link to How Stuff Works. I followed a link from there to the SDMB archive. I then found the message boards.
Brother used to show me the bizzare questions Cecil answered. As the ignorant kid I am, I thought it was a drug related site (my brother was experimenting at the time) because of the Dope. Looked through and found the message boards.
Ditto for me.
Although I first discovered The Straight Dope and computer message boards, as totally unrelated entities, when I was in college in the mid-to-late eighties and working in the college computer center, and copies of Cecil’s first two (and at that time only) Straight Dope books were part of the office paraphenalia.
Some RL friends mentioned it, so I came on down.
Found Straight Dope in the Charleston City Paper, followed it here, lurked a bit & finally registered.
I think someone had mentioned that the Straight Dope was online (doesn’t show up in the newspaper here that I’ve noticed)-- a boyfriend in college had all the books and I’d gotten hooked-- and I came to check it out and read many many of the older articles and then ran into the boards. My browsing boards to reading articles ratio shifted with time.
The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft the straightdope URL from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arnold Winkelried, was to frequent the site. That is why I am here!
I’m a member of an online gaming community for adults. A member, while in IRC chat mentioned this place as a site for good debates, interesting info and all-round pleasant time.
That’s how I got here.
Global Citizen
I don’t remember. My life began that day. Everything before then is a blur.
A lurker turned me on to it.
And boy has it been fun.
Thanks, withak !!!
I got here by www.bored.com
Since I just posted this recently, I’ll do the old c&p
d12, talk about thinking SD was drug related! I was ferried in by the surfed article I mentioned above, at about 4:00 a.m. First topic threads I saw were about “Pregnant Dopers.” It didn’t click right away, and I thought wow, this is gonna be an open-minded group, if you can even admit to hobbies like that.
So, of course I was disappointed when I put two and two together. HAAAAAAAA! Not.
Don’t recall precisely, but having first read Uncle Cecil’s books, I would imagine those led to this site.