You know, it’s funny, but while I’ve read some of the books, just like the Imponderables books, I have never read one of Cecil’s colmns in a newspaper. Basically, I found this site looking for some trivial whatever, and searching for something like questiosn and whatever else.
Any others who just found this place by accident? Or is that more common than I think?
Kinda by accident. Mr. Congo had been playing during lunch one day and he found the Straight Dope. For the first couple months after he showed it to me, I just read Cecil’s answers. One day, he called me, laughing hysterically and told me to read Threadspotting. I normally hate sites like this because they’re usually poorly moderated but I went and looked anyway. I’m now addicted. I love this place!
I found it by accident really. A couple of years ago, I remembered the Straight Dope television series on A&E, so I thought I’d do a search to find out if it was still on the air anywhere. Well, I found the front page of the Straight Dope and, like congodwarf, I read Cecil’s answers for well over a year before I started lurking on the boards this summer. Then I registered, and my free-time has just not been the same. 
Almost the same story as peritrochoid (by the way, it took me four attempts to spell that correctly, I really wanted it to be petroichid, or petrochoid or something. Sorry.)–I had seen the Straight Dope TV show years and years ago, and when I finally had access to the internet, my freshman year of college, one of the first things I did was look it up to see if it was still being shown. I found the home page, and later checked out the boards. To this day, I’ve never seen the column in a newspaper. My local paper was listed on the home page as syndicating it, but they dropped it about six months before I moved to town :(.
I found the front page by seeing it linked on a friend’s personal website. Being British, I’d never even heard of the Straight Dope columns before. It took me about a week to read all the interesting colunns, then I followed the next link along and found the boards. The rest is history.
This was two years ago. 
Where did the time go?
EnderW24 wouldn’t shut up about it. 
I came looking for it. A friend gave me the first book in the mid-'80s and I stumbled across another in a used book store a few years later. I’ve never seen the column in a paper.
When I first got Internet access, it was one of the things I ferreted out. Lacking AOL at the time, I knew of but couldn’t participate in the first iteration of the SDMB.
But I checked the column weekly, and thus knew of this board almost as soon as it fired up. Lurked for a few weeks, and then signed away my free time.
Home of the Underdogs forum led me to the ‘Lord Of The Rings written by someone else’ thread. Gave up on that forum, joined this one
I found Straight Dope on bored.com when I was, well, bored. For a while, I just read the columns, then I spotted threadspotting, so I lurked for a bit, then signed up.
I go way back to the AO-Hell days.
It was rather a shock when AOL dumped the Dope, but I have to admit it is much better done here at their own home on the web.
Dope columns used to be a featured event on AOL, so I checked it out one day, and was hooked.
My father had one of the books around for a long time, I read it over and over again before I even understood what half of the questions were about. Found the link on bored.com one day, made the mental connection. Went through the archives alot, eventually checked out Threadspotting, and, well… there ya go.
Truuuuuuuuuuuuuuue dat.
wakka wakka wakka.
I’m gonna get more coffee.
It all started over at the Urban Legends Reference Pages. After I read all the legends, I headed over to their message boards and began reading that. I eventually tried registering for the snopes message board, but it wouldn’t take for some reason. I tried on and off for the next few months, but it never took. In reading the snopes boards, I saw many people mention the Straight Dope, so I searched for it and found it. I signed up and have been posting ever since.
Rico:
Yep, I’m another relic from the AOL board days, and that’s pretty much how it happened to me too.
I also have been reading since the AOL days, back when I was…12 (six or so years ago).
I remember finding those boards by following a link to an article of Cecil’s about old trees.
:sigh: Those were the good old days.
I followed a link from a Brunching piece in 2001. About a year later, I remembered the site, read a few of Cecil’s articles and registered shortly after.
Mr. Ruby bought me a Straight Dope book for Christmas on a whim. We had never heard of Our-Great-Lord-And-Master-Cecil before that. The book referenced the AOL board and I found my little piece of virtual nirvana here.
The rest is history.
Mr. Ruby now laments, “Are you Doping again? What have I done?”
The brainwashing started sometime during childhood when I received a copy of Ed Zotti’s book Know It All! (basically Straight Dope minus the sex and with only a child-sized helping of bitter sarcasm). I had remembered how in the introduction he kept mentioning some guy named Cecil and something called the Straight Dope, so when I eventually saw a link to the site online I followed it (probably from a site on urban legends or useless information or something). So I read the columns online for a while (and I still make sure to check for new columns before heading over to the boards), then noticed a “Threadspotting” link, started reading the boards, and lurked for about two years before Xan (as a shameless plug for a friend’s chat program, I’ll mention that I met him on GCN) forced me to join. Now the programming is complete and I’m ready to join Cecil’s World Conquest Army at The Master’s command. Hope you’re happy, Ed.
I stumbled on a copy of the first TSD book in the Baylor University bookstore. I was immediately hooked. Fortunately, I was living near Dallas at the time and had ready access to the Dallas Observer, which carried Cecil’s column.
Fast forward a few years to the introduction of this newfangled Internet thingy. I didn’t have AOL during the SDMB’s first iteration, but I kept up with things via Matt Jetmore’s old sites. I lurked for quite a while before registering, but I’m very glad I registered. 
Robin
I enjoyed Cecil’s columns since before some Dopers were born. I’ve always been someone who enjoyed knowing the true facts about things. Occasionally, I’d take one of those AOL disks that I got in the mail and sign up for the free month for the sole reason of reading Cecil’s columns. I never bothered with the message board.
When the non-AOL SDMB started, I would surf over to read the columns but never bothered to read the message boards for the first couple of years. For some reason I decided to look at the message boards and loved them. I think I registered that same day.
Haj