I’m from a small town in Ohio that does not carry any alternative newspapers. Like some previous posters, I happened to run across the first book in the Humor section at Waldenbooks (the only bookstore in town). I read it and was hooked. I remember being extremely frustrated that there were all these people living in cities with alternative newspapers that got to read the Straight Dope EVERY WEEK, and I had to settle for waiting a couple years for the next book to come out.
Then I experienced the years of frustration during which I was aware that there was a Straight Dope message board, but it was available only through AOL. And then, wonder of wonders, it made it to the Real Live Internet, and so here I am.
By the way, I personally have bought multiple copies of each and every single SD book (because I loaned copies to friends and then had to replace the ones for my personal collection) and so I feel I have done my part toward clearing out the warehouse stacks in preparation for the next book (pleasepleaseplease say there will be another book, pleasepleaseplease).
Muffinman used to send me links to his posts occasionally, and eventually, I started straying towards other people’s posts too. I got hooked, and now a good portion of my days are spent on here. I’ve been registerred a year less than Muffinman, and I think I’ve already doubled his post count. Go figure.
I found the Straight Dope in an alternative paper in Raleigh, N.C. Then they dropped the column. I had to wait years for my next Cecil fix. This is my first post(I lurk no more!)
I was surfing the net trying to find out it the tabs from soda cans can really be traded for kidney dialysis treatments. A friend of my family has been collecting them for twenty years, and I always wondered…
I’d never heard of Cecil Adams, but when I found the answer to my question I went on to totally plow through the archives in about four days. I was enthralled. Now I have three or four websites that I check for updates every morning before I even think about doing any work - Straight Dope and Snopes are two of the staples of my morning routine.
I have recommended the site to a lot of people, but nobody has ever come back to me and said “Hey, thanks for sending me to that site, it was fascinating!” Even my Dad, who I thought would love it, only found it mildly diverting.
When i used to live in Dallas, TX (i live in austin now, but anyways…) i read a paper there called “The Met” sometimes. Wouldn’t ya know it, Straight Dope was in that paper. I’ve been a fan ever since. 
-Dani
The San Francisco Bay Guardian has a sex column that I read from time to time. One time somebody asked Andrea Nemerson (the columnist) what a merkin was. Andrea provided a link to Cecil’s answer, because “Cecil knows everything”. And so here I am.
Hello. My name is jr8 (“Hi, jr8”) and I’m a Straightdope addict.
My story mirrors Fugazi’s:
Like so many others, I started with the whimsical sites – a bit of trivia, some word games, that sort of thing. But soon they weren’t giving me the intellectual stimulation I craved, and the sites I started out with became a gateway for harder stuff
Oh sure, I tried only reading Cecil’s daily columns, and at first that was enough. I told myself I could quit any time I wanted. But soon I needed more than one column a day. I started reading the archives. Every day, it was more and more columns, until there were no more. At last, crazed for a fix, I clicked the Threadspotting link – and there was no turning back.
And so you see me here today – a sadder but wiser man.
I was doing a search at http://www.google.com for Goat or other barn-yard animal launchers. I came across a post on sdmb about a goat cannon that someone was wanthing to construct. That is still my favorite post of all time.
Me, too!