My relatively low post count has no bearing on my intense liking/joy for the “people” I have me here and their reactions to my posts.
Though I have few problems with HTML code and such (I write for a living and I refuse to let this stuff infiltrate AP Style), I am contstantly telling Mrs. Heap about what happened on the boards and trying to get her to sign up.
She refuses, so I must be content to get her to all the NYC Dope functions I can.
I tell folks about my friends the “Dopers” without consciously aknowledging the fact that they might have no damn clue what I’m talking about.
I was at wok on the boards when Mrs. Heap called and told me to meet her at the hospital 'cause the Heaplette was on the way, and the very first thing I did was begin a thread to say the baby was coming and I’d let everyone know what it was.
I later left the hospital and raced home to get on the computer and let everyone in on the situation with the barely two-hour-old and then raced back to the hospital.
1.) people refer to me by my name here, IRL (i have no other nicknames, of course, so it’s not displacing anything)
2.) i often type vBcode when i’m writing.
3.) on an unrelated note, i sometimes type Vb code when i’m writing. (i’m taking a Visual Basic course)
4.) if i had a computer on me, i’d post about EVERYTHING. i’d have no “private” life, as i would share every facet i could. i would start threads like; “wow, that was a great sunrise! (midwest dopers share your sunsets!)” / “my first drugs!” / “so… who else eats human corpses?” / “yeah, so i was just shooting people at random out of this belltower…”
5.) i spend so much time here it’s not even FUNNY. i posted maybe ten times in my first good while, but then i opened up and grew 30-40 posts per month for two months five months ago, and for the past three i’ve rocketed to the rate of 200-300 per month. go me.
::on preview::
6.) i also do the same thing as manda JO describes.
As well as half the ones mentioned here, particularly the ones about dreaming about posting, a couple that came to mind:
Reading a newspaper article (offline) and categorising which forum it should be in (“this really is more MPSIMS than GD, so why is it in the Opinions section?”)
If I’m given a check by someone, feeling tempted to say “hey, nice sig!”
I want you all to know that it was completely platonic and he was a complete gentleman during the entire thing. At least, I think so. I hope so.
You, in the dream, looked pretty much nothing like what your pictures tell me you look like. But you know how when you’re having a dream you can assign names to people and BAM, that’s who they are?
You went to my university and we were in class together. I actually thought, at one point, “you know, I don’t remember Spoofe going to school with me…”
OK, so Spoofe had no idea who I was, but I knew who he was. So I was messing with him about science fiction stuff and Star Trek and I eventually was going to tell him who I was, but he left before I could. Alas. A nice cameo though.
When I write an interoffice email in “Dope style”–coding, shorthand slang, etc.–then sign it “Veb” and send it. This has resulted in some VERY interesting responses.
When I dreamed I was at a London dopefest. I’m lousy at developing mental images of people but everybody was very real and excellent company. Woulda been even more fun if I’d been 1. awake and 2. actually there, but hey…
When I pulled a “Zette-ism” at work and threatened to remove a deadbeat contractor’s eyes with a melon baller.
When I get all excited about something I learned here and casually attribute it to a Doper. Then wonder why I get distinctly odd looks.
[ul]
[li]I find myself wanting to do line-by-line replies to op-eds and letters to the editor and sometimes news stories.[/li]
[li]I work in computer network surveillance and maintenance. When there’s a problem with a customer’s circuit, we open a “trouble ticket”, which is an electronic file which links to engineering information and the history of past tickets for that circuit and from which we dispatch technicians to check equipment in our offices or at customer locations. It includes a log which records actions we’ve taken, like dispatching techs, and in which we can put notes about test results or conversations we have with the customer or a tech or a service manager.[/li]
I’m pretty sure I haven’t actually referred out loud to one of my co-workers to a “thread” when I’m talking about a ticket, but I can’t swear I haven’t slipped up yet.
[li]Of course, Sign #1 that you’ve been a Doper WAY too long is when they up and make you a Moderator.[/li][/ul]
I ahve only been a doper 3 months or so, but it is clearly taking its toll. Sure, there’s the lost sleep, lack of human contsact, etc., but I think the proof is really the dreams. I had this dream last night:
I was walking down the street and went into a pub near my house. There were three people sitting together at a table near the door. Of course, I recognized them as Gingerof theNorth, alice_in_wonderland, and matt_mcl. I have no idea why it was these three, as I have met none of them, and I don’t think they have anything to do with each other either. I also heve no idea how I knew who they were.
Anyway, I sat down at their table, but they didn’t recognize me at all. This made me very upset in my dream, and I started wildly trying to remember things from the boards to prove to them that I knew who they were. They just got really freaked out, and eventually matt_mcl asked the waitress to throw me out, which she did. I was outside the pub, looking through the window at them, when I woke up.
Hell, in some cases I only know people by their SNs/AOL Usernames! Try explaining to a friend that you were having a conversation with Libertarian or Polycarp! “He’s gone plumb loco!”
And doing the crossword at lunchtime is becoming a distant memory.
The most annoying thing about being Dope-obsessed is that other people don’t understand how great it is. For some reason, talking about conversations you’ve had on the internet makes you sound like a fruitloop. This despite the fact that talking about the exact same conversation on the telephone would sound entirely normal.
I fervently wish all wordprocessing programs used vB coding. It would make my life much simpler. Who wants cntrl-B when you can just type “[**b]”?
Here’s one. Mr. Seawitch refers to himself as “Mr. Seawitch” because I call him that all the damn time. He doesn’t read or post here, either. Just picked it up from my constant nattering.
Also, I spend way too much time reading t-shirts and bumper stickers. Last week I had to explain to my shopping buddy that I wasn’t going to buy anything, but you never know when you might run across a good sig line.
When you listen to someone telling a joke in real life (which you say as IRL in your head) and say LOL to yourself…or you find yourself saying it out loud…which is guaranteed to get you a few looks.
When you go through customs and say you are going to visit a few friends you have never met because it would be much less troublesome then saying you are going to a dopefest.
And the final sign that you have been a doper waaaay too long is when you post to someones birthday thread for the third year in a row (Hi Canadian Sue )
