I was doing some cleaning and found one of Uncle Cecil’s books and decided to visit. I can’t even remember my original nickname from back then but mostly lurked. I’m registered under my Fark name now; I wandered over there 20 years ago and got lost. LOL I’ve already doom scrolled the In Memoriam list and cried my eyes out. Any important things I should know? Think I might stick around, I see a lot of familiar faces.
We changed board software a couple of years ago, to a new platform called Discourse.
The Dope is now owned by the same parent company that owns Chicago’s NPR radio station, and the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper.
More sub-forums now than we used to have.
A reduced tolerance for sexist, racist, and mean-spirited comments, which has angered those who miss the “freewheeling” old days, but hopefully has made the place more inviting.
Message boards, on the whole, are becoming an endangered species, and most of our active users are older; we do attract some newer (and younger) users, but the population here is noticeably gray-haired.
Oh yeah, and we can post images. 
Welcome, @Poldana!
And some are unable to determine hair color due to lack thereof.
Just to be clear: we can now include, in our posts, links to images that are out on the Internet, and the board software will show them as images, rather than links.
What we still can’t do is upload images directly to the board as part of a post.
We can also include links to Youtube videos, and have them show up as videos – sometimes. 
(Discourse has been flaky about how it handles video links for a while now.)
Gonna have to learn to link. Check. I see the humor hasn’t changed much. I’m guessing the Dad jokes have increased, though.
The humor has changed in one pretty important way: it’s a lot less tolerant of leering sexist jokes than it used to be.
Six or seven years ago I made a really funny reply to a comment. I’ll try to find it.
It’s not just the offensive stuff (which is gone with good reason), it’s pretty much anything with any level of controversy/impropriety that’s gone as well. I haven’t seen a good sex thread, poop/farts/shit your pants thread, or anything remotely off-color in a long, long time.
On behalf of those with failing eyesight, I note the lack of inclusivity.
This has always been a forward thinking group here. Fighting ignorance and all that…
Maybe you should open the other eye.
:flees:
Hey, I had gray hair even back in the day! It’s a much larger percentage of my hair now, though.
I like the more sensitive Dope. I fled Twitter before I rediscovered this place, and it’s nice not to have to wade through toxic garbage to engage in online socializing.
Do! We have some amazingly intelligent people here. I consider myself very intelligent and very well educated, but I learn new things here every day.
When I started lurking (early 2001) and posting (September 2001) I had a lot of hair, now not so much, evidently posting in the SDMB causes hair loss…
We’re all older now. So the site no longer has that atmosphere of being in a group of friends sharing a joint in a college dorm room, telling in-jokes, etc. Instead, we’re more like a bunch of old farts sharing a table in Starbucks with some newfound friends joining in.
(For example: There used to be lots of threads here on the theme of “help me polish my resume”, or “should I report this coworker to HR?”, or “vacation tips for hiking the Appalachian Trail”. Nowadays you’re more likely to see threads about retirement, or vacations on a cruise ship.)
Do you remember old memes (before they were called memes) such as: 1920’s death rays, “Hi Opal”, “bring pie”, rules about kitty pics…
Well. they’re all gone now, like a faded poster of Simon and Garfunkel that was tacked to the back of a door.
Also…Uncle Cecil is no longer the bedrock of the site. His wit and wisdom were essential to defining this place.(and why I fell in love with it). But, alas, Google (which did not exist when the site began) has made it possible to fight ignorance without waiting for Cecil to publish a new article. So the boards continue with the inspiration from, but not the participation of, the world’s smartest human being.
That leaves us oldtimers with greying hair trying hard to keep the momentum going.
'Cause we are still, hands-down, the best site on the entire internet.
Welcome Back!!!
I recently reread old threads on where you lost your virginity and where is the weir place you’ve ever had sex. Good times!
But I don’t think they would get much traction now.
“Is that a leg?”
Welcome back, whoever you once were!
What if I made a joke about a leering sexist? “So this leering sexist walks into a bar…”