It's Better To Light A Single Wossname Than Curse The Thingummy: What Keeps You Here?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

{Mods, please move to MPSIMS as you see fit}

With all the recent tension, I thought it might be good to share a few comments about what makes this board special: what brought us here, and what keeps us here? Lighting a single candle, and all that.

For me, it was a very bad patch in my life, what with a few mental problems and drug issues, I was at a pretty low ebb for a few years. I lurked here for a while, and started tentatively posting about four years back. When I found that I could hold my own here {mostly} constructively and even {occasionally} contribute positively meant more than I can say for my self-confidence: when I wasn’t able to do much else, this board was my connection to the world and a lifeline to sanity, and I’ll always be grateful for how reading and posting here helped me recover the mind I thought I’d lost.

2

What got me here was a link from Internet Infidels, a website I’d only idly perused. I fell in love with the crazy-smart (in varying degrees of crazy and smart) mix of people here and don’t think I’ve been back to I.I. more than once or twice since I joined.

What’s kept me here has probably been the challenges to my previously held opinions. Generally stuff I hadn’t even realised I’d had an opinion on, until someone started an argument/made a point about it. *Admittedly, most of the time I tend to come to the conclusion that I am right and they are wrong, but occasionally I’ve been known to change a point of view. *

The other thing is the humour. Over the years I learned to beeline towards posts started by Master Wang-ka, Scylla, Sampiro, and other great storytellers, who have such a way with words that they take ME away with them!

Then there are the silly threads that take on a life of their own - one of my favourites is a now long-dead one by **roshia **called Ask the girl with the makeshift ouija board which made it into my permanent bookmarks. Or Rat in coffee. Woe is me by Amazon Floozy Goddess - one of those threads that evolves into something marvellous just from the sheer creativity and craziness within.

Another favourite post is Roland Orzabal’s pitting of the Most Evil Guy In the World. I think that guy lives in my neighbourhood, because I’m sure my local police are after him!

Then there’s the category of ‘things I can completely relate to’, such as Most embarrassing foreign language mistake? by Eva Luna, or My bladder knows when I’m home by Patty O’Furniture.

It’s things like these that keep me here, and guarantee I’ll renew my membership every year. Really, you can’t put a price on this stuff. :smiley:

3

Thanks for all the links, Bites. I’d almost forgotten some of these and the Rat in Coffee one I had somehow missed. The poetry is priceless! I agree that these are the things that keep us coming back. (Nice to see some praise for the board, for a change.)

I also come for the information. I have posted questions only a few times but in every case I have been blown away with the speed of the replies – and the helpfulness. Once I asked a question about a (not mainstream) comic strip I didn’t “get” and within 15 minutes I had the answer! Amazing. Lots of really well informed and helpful people here. Hope it continues to be thus.

4

Yo, BWP! Your link to the Most Evil Guy also takes us to the Ouija Board thread!

Please fix for the correct link. Thank you. :slight_smile:

And that brings me to one of many possible answers to the OP. There are tons and tons of ways we can help and inform each other. :smiley:

  • “Jack”
5

For all it’s faults it’s still the best conversation on the net. It’s well moderated, the posters are intelligent and although there are noticable biases, there is still a diversity of views represented.

6

Eep! My bad. Here is The Most Evil Guy!

But hey, the ouija one is probably good enough to visit twice. :wink:

7

No doubt. There is amother thread, still active, that is linked in post #3:

>>>>>> here, but beware! <<<<<<

… but folks who visit it and are creeped out (as is a pretty common reaction) shouldn’t say I didn’t warn them!

  • “Jack”
8

Entropy. It’s been six years and I know a lot of the personalities here.

9

It’s the only general-purpose board I belong to, having left all the others as the years went by. Despite its problems, it’s a lot more fun than other boards.

10

Come for the Wossname, stay for the Thingummy.

11

I stay in a doomed attempt to re-balance the board with more Wossname, less Thingummy.

Really, I stay because I can say pretty much anything I want, and pretend that it matters and that someone cares. In the RW, at least one of those elements is missing almost every time I open my mouth.

12

To quote The Critic, I have nowhere else to go.

13

I stay for stuff like the title of this thread.

14

Inertia, I mean. Entropy doesn’t even make sense.

15

It made sense to me… :cool:

I stay for much the same reason, plus, having seen what else is out there, this is Grade A, prime, top quality message boarding. It has spoiled me for much of the rest of the internet.

And I like the people. The snacks are good, too.

16

Bacon salt. It’s all about the bacon salt.

17

My life long quest is to become a font of useless knowledge. The Dope is the one stop shopping center for that.

18

Intelligence.

99% of the rest of the internet is marred by unending, inescapable stupidity. It’s quite disheartening. But here there is intelligence without too much intellectualism.

Plus, when they’re on their game, the humour from the SDMB comedians is outstanding.