I first learned of it when I visited the on-line site for the Washington City Paper, where I used to live during law school. The City Paper had Cecil’s column in it and included it in their on-line edition.
Of course, I’ve known about the Straight Dope phenomenon for some time.
D’oh
I used to watch the TV show on whatever channel it was on, but I found the website just playing around on AOL.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
– Henry David Thoreau
There used to be a television show? Tell me about it.
As I remember it wasn’t on that long…maybe a season?..two?..But it had a guy on tv that would read some of the questions Cecil recieved and the explaining the answere’s…the only problem I had with it was that if you’ve read his books, you knew all the questions/answere’s…I think it was TLC or Discovery channel…
I discovered the books at the bookstore. Had 2 or 3 of them before I discovered the web site. I was an internet beginner and didn’t know what a message board was so it took me about 3 months to actually go into the MB site to investigate. Didn’t think it would have anything interesting…silly me.
I’ve had the books since 1984. Well, the first book since 1984, and bought the others as they came out. I had the AOL site bookmarked, and used it as I used any other reference.
When it switched over to the web, I bookmarked it here, and was using it to procrastinate at work, and accidentally clicked on the magic rune that brought me to our marvelous little world. And I’ve been procrastinating at work here ever since.
Uke
I discovered the message board after reading TSD in the papers and reading the books. I did a search one lonesome day, and my spirits were lifted!
Don’t let the loveless ones sell you a world wrapped in grey.
Been reading SD books for over 10 years now. Watched the show (which was on A&E, BTW), and loved it. Found the website when I turned on my computer, and there was a link, right on the AOL Welcome page. Happy happy Joy Joy!
From a search engine. I was searching for a Q2 bb and my keywords listed every bb that uses UBB software. I have over 250 bb’s bookmarked and signed up with about 24 of them. I lurk at maybe 50 and post actively at 8 (BladeForums, KnifeForums, Benchmade, TheFiringLine, ReaderRant, AnimalRights.net, Warner Bros. Message Board, and The Straight Dope) and a moderator at Cinematopia.com (4+ moderators still wanted).
This is a fun sight. I wish there was more info and less WAG though. This site is similar to the Darwin Awards in attitude.
I discovered Cecil’s “The Straight Dope” book quite a while ago in the library and loved it. Then one day I saw a link to TSD on AOL’s welcome page, so I followed it, having read the first book. The length of the message board was prohibitive, as I didn’t know how to “Mark all read,” but eventually I caught on and have been with it off and on ever since.
And BTW, can anyone possibly convince the Provo, Utah library to buy all of Cecil’s books? They only have the first one, and I’m too cheap to buy the books myself. But I guess that the SDMB has been such a good source of entertainment for me for so long, I probably owe Cece at least the cost of a couple of paperback books. Never mind.
Boring: My husband showed me the AOL site.
I have no idea how he found it though. This was about…um… 3-4 years ago and I’ve been a message board junkie ever since.
>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://opalcat.com
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions
I’d never heard of the SD as of a couple of years ago. I never read the Reader even though I’ve grown up in Chicago. A college roomate had the entire library of Cecil’s books and I needed to kill some time procrastnating and borrowed them. I was hooked, they were ideal for my very short attention span, but extremely intellectually stimulating and had the ideal amount of sarcasm. Just like me :). I read them all in about a week, and slept through all my classes because of it. My friend then told me about the web site because we couldn’t get the column at school. The rest is history.