Like some others, a link from the AOL front page.
Before that I had read the columns and books for years.
My father bought the book The Straight Dope in circa 1986. I began reading the book at age 14 (in 1996) and subsequently bought the other books of Cecil Adams’ Straight Dope columns.
My mother discovered the SDMB introduced me to it in mid-2001, and I registered later that year. She not a member here anymore but still lurks some…hi Mom.
I was homeschooling the AdoptaKids (now AdoptaTeens :eek: ) and brought them to work with me in April 2002. AdoptaDaughter asked what the dangling thing in the back of her throat was and I couldn’t remember the name of it so I asked a co-worker. He sent me a link to a Straight Dope thread and I instantly became addicted. I originally registered as AdoptaMom and somewhere along the line lost my password or something so I reregistered as AdoptaMom_II.
I don’t post very often but have hurt my brain learning, my belly laughing, and my tear ducts crying by following these boards.
I think it was the Lord of the Rings thread.
I do not “happen upon” things :rolleyes:
I found it deliberately and intentionally.
I’m trying to happen upon a whitty replay for that, and I got nothin’.
“Whitty replay”?
(Yeah, I should have done a 
or 
instead of an :rolleyes: … oops. Blame Keira Knightley)
Seriously tho, my sister discovered the books sometime in the 80’s and loaned them to me. Then I had a couple of boring jobs between 95 and 2000. Either the site was mentioned in one of the later books or I found it with Altavista.
Don’t actually remember how long I’ve been reading the Dope online, but I’m fairly sure I posted in '99.
I was in a boring lecture about 3 years ago fooling around on my laptop. I heard someone a few rows away whisper to the guy next to him “Check out this site Straight Dope, it answers a question a day.”
I MSN searched (heh) the term and found the website. Checked it every day for about a year until I poked around enough to find the forums. Trolled since then, finally got around to registering for the free account last week. Yeah, I’ll probably subscribe once this trial period runs out.
I read his column in the Washington City Paper and came across the SDMB. I’ve been lurking here since the earliest days and posted under another name, but forgot the password and signed up as MM28 instead (I know you’re not to do that, but I was a crazy kid way back then).
I was just trying to deliver a pizza
I saw it mentioned on Goodle Answers (which is now ‘retired’) had a look and made a swift decision to pony up the $15
It took me the odd day to figure the ground rules.
Generally I find the jerk/member ratio alarmingly high on forums, here it is unusually low.
I wish I had found it years ago, but maybe it is a good thing I didn’t, as I was on pay per minute ISDN
I picked up the URL from one of Cece’s books. I’ve been an addict since '99.
(counts backwards about 6 or 7 years) I was in a particularly boring class on, IIRC, Windows Administration. The class computers had Internet Explorer locked down, but I managed to get ahold of Opera…The straight dope was one if the default installed links.
Good thing I already knew how to Admin Windows.
I was invited here by jarbabyj.
Obviously a Freudian slip of some sort.
I am not a transvestite.
Flander (not sure if he visits anymroe) mentioned/linked to it. The 18" ice blue jelly-dong thread was the first I read.
Back in late 1999 I was reading Fark.com , and there were a lot of links back here. One day I checked the message board, and have lurked ever since. Finally I joined up when I had a question to ask after a year plus of lurking.
Very similar to the OP actually. A friend of mine suggested I “candle” my ear to alleviate an ear problem I had. I knew I had read somewhere that burning a candle in your ear was complete and utter bunk so I did a Google search.
I found an excellent article about it in the archives. A few clicks here and there, and boom! I found this place.
Oh! Look at this! It’s still 2nd in the search results! Cool!
Link from some webpage which anyway stopped linking the Dope long ago…
I got a free membership, then it expired and I didn’t pony up because anyway I was moving across borders (not even sure which move across borders that one was). A while later I was bored out of my brain at work, poked about a bit, created a new account with a better name (what, I don’t even remember what the original one was) and paid up. Been posting inane responses and tongue-in-cheek bits of Spanish history for a couple years.
My local giveaway paper used to run the column.