I know this has been done a few times before but I felt like adding my 2 cents.
I **ALWAYS **learn new things when reading the Dope. Not always the big, complicated, scientific explanations – sometimes just small, everyday things. Like new words, or cultural references, or just being surprised to learn what other people find important. For example:
Just today I learnt about **Clamato **Juice from the What do you Drink if You Don’t thread . Sounds horrible, couldn’t imagine it in my wildest dreams, but I will definitely try it if I ever get the chance.
I also learnt about **Velveeta **from the Heart Attack On a Plate Thread . Looked it up on Wikipedia – not at all what I was expecting. Sounded like something horrible and artificial – turns out it’s basically cream cheese.
Now I know none of these things are life altering bits of information – but every day I marvel at how little I know, even though I consider myself to be well travelled, mostly intelligent and widely read.
There is NO subject you can bring up where you will not find people disagreeing. I love this. I’m not being facetious, I really love the enormous variety of ideas and opinions. You can literally not say anything that someone, somewhere will disagree with. And it seems to be that the smaller and more inconsequential the subject is, the more vehemently people will disagree.
Not that this needs any examples (with all the “cats – inside or out?” and “shoes – on or off?” threads) but this just fascinates me. You expect people to argue about politics or religion, but I seldom see the point of arguing about minor things that hardly affect your life. Start a thread like “Let’s talk about how great ‘x’ is” and someone will invariable come in, within the first few posts, and say it’s complete crap. The best reads are the threads where I have no opinion either way and I just love to read the different views.
What keeps me reading? Pretty much this last one. I find it fascinating how some seemingly inconsequential thread will suddenly turn into a raving, screaming mess.
Clamato doesn’t really taste much different from straight tomato juice to me and I’d’ve never known the difference if I hadn’t bought the bottle myself.
I learn new words. Plus the people are cool, plus…
But really, there’s few places where I can go secure in my knowledge that 99% of the place will be correctly spelled and most of the things being said will be expressed without resorting to “U FAG!!!eleventy!!”
I think I’ll avoid the Velveeta and the clamato juice. What’s kept me hanging around here for 8 years are the same things DangleYourModifier said. I’m always learning something new, and I’ve gained a new perspective on a great many things. While I may not agree with the positions people around here hold sometimes, I can at least learn why they hold them and understand their points of view.
I know it’s ‘JUST A MESSAGEBOARD’ but six years of exposure to this particular community of people doesn’t amount to nothing… I believe I have become a more understanding tolerant well-rounded person as a direct result of the dope. I look back at my early attitudes and posts and see someone else, not ME.
To me, the Dope feels like a family of distant relatives. I don’t really KNOW any of you, but I know bits and pieces about you. There’s a general sense of camraderie amongst most everyone (except for a few “black sheep,” which every family has.) We share our joys and sorrows, opinions and arguments, and even our MPSIMS-ses.
Plus, as Nava mentioned, it’s nice to not have to deal with “teh typical intarwebz” in this place.
Not sure this fits the OP, but I have found that forcing myself to put my thoughts into words that I can expect to be challenged in a systematic way — whether I actually click ‘submit reply’ or not — has changed the way I think about the world.
Surprisingly, to me anyway, I have changed my position on at least one major topic not because of any reanalysis of my own thoughts, but because of how I interpret the arguments that others use.
Now I’m even disagreeing with people I agree with. Curse the SDMB.
It sounded like cream cheese when I read up about it, but from this description I can see it’s some sort of processed cheese product. In any case it’s hihgly unlikely I’ll get to try it any time soon, but at least I know about it now.
Thirded. I’ve been hanging out on a different board lately, and while the people there a totally cool and get long great, the web-speak is really grating.
This board has taught me to be far more tolerant of different ideas. One day a couple of years ago I made the decision to never flame anyone again. My record is not quite 100%, but pretty close, and my experience here is all the better because of it.
It’s really not good stuff. About the only use I have for it is to mix it with salsa and nuke it to make tortilla dip, and even then it’s been about a decade and a half since I’ve had that.
I think there may be a translation issue going on here. When I lived in Australia, there was cream cheese (which was sort of similar to Velveeta, but more spreadable) and Philadelphia cream cheese, which was exactly the same as in the U.S. The OP is in South Africa, so maybe their cream cheese* is* comparable to Velveeta?
