Beyond that, though, I think $15 a year does seem like a lot, even to a lot of people who can afford it easily. It may be particularly true with older people, above 45 y.o.a. or so, who remember when general price levels were much lower than they are today.
With regard to our endlessly recurring threads about dollar bills, dollar coins, and/or pennies, I was recently struck by the realization that old expressions “a dime a dozen”, denoting cheapness, and “two bit”, meaning small-time or insignificant in the larger scheme of things, were “coined” – hah!-- at a time when a dime and a quarter were worth many times more than they are now. Even so, judging by these expressions, people back then didn’t think of them as “a lot of money”.
So it is with amounts like $15. I can’t help wonder if the cultural memory of earlier times, from books and movies, still suggests to us that they refer to a big bag of heavy, silver coins, or even harder to picture, two gold coins you could hold in your palm, one about the size of a quarter and the other the size of a nickel. And much as l love this place, there’s no way I’d give them .75 oz of fine gold each year.
I didn’t pay for several reasons.
For a while I was on an obsolete computer and couldn’t post. After I upgraded, the boards had gone to the pay method, but I was pretty broke. I’d been away for a while anyhow; so my addiction was broken and it wasn’t that big a deal to lurk.
After I got back into a real job and could afford it, the board was still running as slowly and unreliably as it had previously, and I didn’t see the point in spending money on a service I likely couldn’t use when I wanted anyway.
Lastly, even though the board has always had a strong liberal bent and bias, the ramped up degree of rage, hatred and bile I’ve seen while lurking around here for the last couple years for pretty much any idea that didn’t have the democrat/socialist/other left wing seal of approval was fairly offensive.
As a crotchety “small l” libertarian, I didn’t see paying for the privilege of being verbally crucified for offering up opinions contrary to those held by the offenderati as something I needed to do.
There have always been things I loved about the SDMB, though. Now that it’s free again, I’m happy to be back. I’m also happy to see many of the old posters I liked coming back as well.
I was paying for a awhile; but then I realized I was paying to come on here and get in bitter arguments with people I didn’t even know and end up really pissed off. I don’t need to pay to get pissed off. But I’ll do it for free.