Calm down mods, this isn’t another thread about Silo.
Has anyone else noticed those who were your friends look at you with scorn and condescention when you talk about the Straight Dope?
My friends actually had a gang-bang thing going on the other day. It began by me correcting a “fact” with something Cecil said (I don’t remember what). Then it turned ugly. Imagine me defending and about 4 people attacking.
“The internet is the least reliable source of information EVER!”
“Well, he writes in a newspaper!”
“They’re even worse!”
“And he shows his sources!”
“He could fake them!”
“He CALLS UP people!”
“Plus, I disapprove of any one source being used as a reference.” LaurAnge sighs
“Has anyone else noticed the similarities between the Straight Dope and a CULT? Mysterious leader, mindless followers…”
“WE’RE NOT MINDLESS! And for heavens sake, not that many people read it anyway!”
At which point I was very surprised to find out that EVERYONE THEY KNOW checks this site. People from work, people from school. I thought I was the only one (well, besides matt_mcl) in Montreal who had heard of it. Advertisers, take note. Hmm… I even remember explaining to 95% of them what the Staight Dope is…
Help me, people. I need moral support. Some of my friends have dishonoured Cecil, said he was lying and that he wasn’t a reliable source of information.
To my way of thinking, a cult consists of a group of people conditioned into a homogenous way of thinking.
A satanic cult conditions people to be brutal.
Other cult leaders can condition their followers to be meditative zombies, etc. etc.
From my experience with respondents around here, way more than 50% of SDMBers have displayed vicious, non-truthful, devil-may-care attitudes in response to my posts, and furthermore they back each other up.
That smacks to me of mindless cultism. I sometimes wonder, if many more people from other cultures would learn English and join SDMB, what would happen then…
As long as Cecil Adam’s residence is not referred to as a “compound”, or his collumns contain no random scrambled allusions to a shadowy figure known as “Nehemiah X” - we are safe from the cult label.
Okay, I have 10 acres, I have a well, I have a pond, and I have woods. If someone has a generator and lots of ammo, we have all the makings of one heck of a commune/cult. We have doctors, we have engineers, and we have manual labor. What more do we need? I’ll start building the wall tomorrow. When ya’ll movin in?
Family dinner, moderately conservative Christian family. Someone brings up something and states that it is true. I, of course, know that it is NOT…due to my education at the hands of the great Cecil.
“How do you know that, Cheri?”
“I read it on the Chicago Reader website, the one by Cecil Adams.”
“Do you go there often?”
“Yes, I post to a message board there. I really enjoy it…I have made some really good friends and it is always informative and entertaining.”
But these people value knowledge as much as we do. I swear, when I first started posting here, I was going crazy with the similarities between the societies.
And although I did mention the cult thing for joking purposes (I only MENTIONED it for joking purposes, he did really say it and mean it) this disdain of something I find so important bugs me.
The Better Half firmly believes that Marilyn Vos Savant rocks, and that she may actually be wiser than Cecil.
We have had to agree to disagree. You don’t throw away 27 years of marriage because of something like this.
But it was close–we thought of the children (who incidentally are great fans of General Questions and many of the Classic Columns, especially the ones dealing with bodily functions.)
I want to meet your parents, Lauren. I want to tell them that myself and another homosexual of ill repute took you to a drag club. And that we proudly call ourselves Dopers.
To seriously adress the OP, I’d just liketo say that I get a lot of flack for quoting the SD, too.
I think the fact that most things I quote directly contradict the bullshit people are claiming, has a lot to do with it
As many of you know, I work (and live) in an A&D recovery house. A resident was looking over my shoulder the other day while I was on this site.
he: “What’s The Straight Dope?”
me: “It’s a site with all kinds of interesting information. I usually just visit the message boards, though.”
he: “Straight Dope…so it’s run by recovering addicts?”
me: “No…”
he: “So what’s it mean? Straight Dope?”
me: “It’s that old expression. You know, the facts. The truth. The straight dope.”
he: [blank stare]
me: “It’s just a funny name, I guess…”
