Hey! This is unfair. My complaints are intensely important, much more important than anyone else’s! How can I DRAW ATTENTION TO MYSELF if my posts are buried in the ghettoized thread?
Dammit, I pay your salaries, I…er, oh, never mind.
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Just wondering–Wouldn’t there be a problem donating money for a for-profit organization? The Reader’s not a non-profit right?
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Why is it BS? If you spent $5.00 at Starbucks and then harrassed the other customers, they could still kick you out right? You (the general “you”) don’t have the right to be a jerk just because you gave someone some money. I’m sure Ed would be happy to refund money if necessary to get jerks off the board.
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Bitch and moan at Ed all you want. I hear he likes it.
Promises, promises…
Just how odd is that bag of potato chips, CJ?
Maybe I’m looking at this wrong, but here’s what struck me:
I guess the folks that worry about “paying to provide content” have never bought a t-shirt advertising a band or a TV show or whatever. By wearing the shirt, I’m effectively paying to advertise whatever’s on the shirt. Same thing with designer labels. And we do this gladly.*
My posts are pretty content-free too, but at least registering here is cheaper than a t-shirt.
Is that too far-fetched an analogy?
*except for the designer labels part. I can’t afford them. But I happily wear t-shirts to “advertise” things I like.
Some people just resent being asked for money. But they become infuriated at the suggestion that they resent being asked for money.
That’s what all the high and mighty stuff comes down to in a nutshell.
If I’d seen you there, lieu, I would’ve called the authorities. Safety obligations dictate that a movie theater keep its exits well-lit.
Considering the subject matter of the threads lieu is notorious for starting, I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this story… 
Great comeback.
Just thought I’d throw in my $5.02…
I’ve only been here for a month or three – I can’t remember what information I was looking for, but when I Googled it I found a post here on the SMDB and ended up having a looksie around. Ever since then, not a day goes by when I don’t zoom through the boards picking up all kinds of interesting information. This place reminds me of the BBS’s back in the mid 80’s, and I mean that as a compliment. Boards were populated by people who had to TRY to get online, and because of that most people seemed like they would use that effort to say something meaningful. Debates. Discussions. Helping people with questions. I haven’t found a message board like that in ages – many places are overrun by l337 d00dz who have so much to say they can’t bother to type out the word ‘you’ when responding, and where threads started with good intentions quickly devolve into arguments over who suxorz the most and why.
But then, thanks to Google, I stumble in here. And even though I’ve been here a grand total of two months, I already know that the $5 I’ve spent is going to buy a lot of quality reading, and hopefully, contribution to the forums. I had the knee-jerk reaction about how the internet should be free, but then I thought about how even though I had the ENTIRE internet available to me, I always end up coming back here.
$5 for a year is a small price to pay for the use of the boards, the attentiveness of the moderators, and the collective intellect (and stupidity of everybody here!
EZ
p.s. I never posted an official “Hi” to everybody since I was primarily a lurker. So…
Hi!
You can see by my post count (hopefully - now that I am a newly minted member) that I am mostly a lurker. I rarely feel the urge to reply to a comment, and everytime I have some useful information, someone else beats me to the post by about a week. So I thought about whether or not to sign up for a few seconds. Then I tried to view new posts and no longer had that privilidge. So my mind was made up. I spend more time at Straight Dope than any other non-business related website. Thanks
Hey, World Eater, watch it. We’re in the pit!
Welcome to the fucking pit, HelenTroy!
Egad! And I thought that the charter bus I saw going by my house a few weeks ago was tourists coming to see maple syruping in “olde small-town” New Hampshire!
By the way, the writing in the window on the charter bus was in Japanese. Were the SDMB Cabal members turning Japanese? :eek:
mmm … I bet you’re lying.
Prove me wrong.
Hey, I can go down to the ferry terminal and buy you some cologne that supposedly smells like a riding crop…
F_X
I really think so!
Whoops, my bad.
You pockfaced, grimelicking, ass lacking a hat, scourge on humanity!
Dare? Watakushi? Tondemo nai!
[Who? Me? Never!]
By the way, SkipMagic, don’t feel so bad – jayjay overlooked me. The tragedy! [dramatic sigh!]
Thanks for the compliments, folks. I wrote, as always, what I felt. You people are my friends, at least a lot of you are, and worth every penny.
CJ
I’ve been here in various forms since 1999. I’m not much of a poster, but I’m an avid lurker, and I feel like I have friends here even if they have no idea who I am.
I suspect that turning the SDMB into a pay site spells certain death, but suppose I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong.
I feel the need to say goodbye while I still have the chance, since I’ve made the decision not to pay for posting/searching privileges (based partly on principle, partly on my belief that the board won’t be worth paying for when it’s no longer free, and partly on the fact that I simply don’t post often enough to make the choice economical).
So without further ado, Goodbye SDMB. This place has been a big part of my life, and I will miss it.
So this is the new ‘content free’ pay-as-you-post, SDMB. 