Hokay, boys and girls … time for a trip down memory lane.
Back in the summer of 2000, ChiefScott started organizing a Norfolk dopefest. Lots of people indicated that they wanted to come, so the thread got well underway. Among the participants in said thread were myself and Montfort. We got to jokingly fighting about Anniz, who I believe posted in there saying “I can’t come, but I wish I could” (she was living in Sweden at the time, so…:)), and from that spawned the “Montfort, in here, please” thread wherein Montfort and I took turns “picking” women of the SDMB. While it was a fun thread and meant totally in jest, some people started to get offended, IIRC, that well-loved dopers hadn’t been picked yet (this was on like page two, and the thread had already degenerated into about fifteen hijacks). Anniz posted a link to a picture of herself, and I said something like “I pick you. Three times.” Woman was hot hot hot. I mean, goddamn. That (so Anniz says) led to Montfort and her talking a lot more off the boards, and in November of that year Montfort went to Sweden to meet her. She came back to visit him in February of 2001, and they were married in … I want to say September? They were married for Dopeaween, at which I (among many others) saw a vide of their marriage, which had also been broadcast on the internet (if you knew the website to go to).
I’m still waiting for one of the older-old timers to explain the Who Was Mr. Ruda Duda? thread back on the old AOL board. I remember someone explaining it to me like 3 years ago, but I’ve long since forgotten. Help me out, folks!
I also recall a few instances with Silo/Mike Masterson. He’s been mentioned here a few times already, but I’m remembering a time when someone (damn, I suck at names) and I were chatting about his “MY PENIS IS SOOOO BIG!” threads at mIRC. This, btw, was after his Mike Masterson incarnation. He still liked to talk about his penis, just not quite as prolifically nor graphically. So, I suggested to this Doper that, at the next DopeFest (where the two of them would happen to be), she call Silo on it and ask him to whip it out and prove it. Stunningly, she did. Not so stunningly, he didn’t–saying “He’s a gentleman.” (We all had a good laugh over that.) Whether or not he’s well-hung didn’t matter to us–it was just seeing if he would be as brash and proud of himself in face-to-face confrontation as he was in the veiled annonymity of the Boards. Apparently, he was completely shocked by her asking and it made for some amusing (intentional and otherwise) posts on his return.
I met Silo, briefly, at the DopeToberFest last fall. No, I didn’t ask him to whip it out. Kind of a timid fellow in person, at least that’s the vague impression I got through the haze of bronchitis.
Hey, does anyone remember who I was before Ruffian? Under my old s/n, I started a thread that would more or less affix itself to me for months to come: Oral Sex Techniques. A few people were stunned, thinking, Why–that’s against SDMB rules! But–it was asking out of genuine need so the mods had no prob with it, and I received awesome advice. I still go back to it a few times for ideas.
I’ve cited it before, but since no one else has mentioned it yet…
Coldfireonce set up Mullinator (you’ll have to ask one of those two to explain what led to this), promising the women of the board that if they’d post there saying “do me”, Mullinator would write them a passionate naughty love letter and post it right there in the thread. Of course by the time Mully came across it, he owed several letters! Then, as he started posting the letters–
a) the exceptional quality led to a new slew of “do me” posts, and of course it would have been irresponsible of him to let the quality slack off; he eventually issued a cut-off notice, or he’d be writing them to this day;
b) some of the guys reading the thread started to get jealous, reading all these fascinating female dopers clamoring for a Mully love letter of their own, including Chef Troy, who subsequently imposed upon himself the same fate that Coldie had imposed upon Mullie, starting his own thread of naughty love letters from Cheffie;
c) Opal didn’t find the Mully thread until after the cut-off notice had been issued. She showed up in Cheffie’s, though, saying
somehow the original “Hey Ladies! Naughty Love Letters from Mully!” thread seems to have disappeared. I’ve tried chasing it down with a rather formidable array of search parameters to no avail. The link goes to a BoardReader archived copy of it.
Followup: On re-reading the original Coldfire-Mullinator naughy love letters thread, I get the strong impression that it resulted from something Mully said in straightdope chat. C’mon, guys, tell the story!
His experiences in NYC on 9/11. It’s a long one, but it’s a keeper.
Since I’m an editor and a writer, I’ve naturally thought about compiling an anthology of SD writings (for my own use, of course), but the amount of great material would make it an overwhelming project.
So instead the SDMB has become a resource. I’ve pulled material from a thread on romantic poetry for a short story, and another on intellectual jokes for a novel I’m writing. The BBQ Pit has inspired me to become more inventive in my invective. I became hooked on Terry Pratchett from reading the boards, and I just downloaded the recommended lists of movies to watch for when we finally buy a DVD player.
There was a Part 3 and Part 4 written to the story. They will never be posted, or mailed to anyone.
There were four good reasons why this must be so, any one of which was sufficient to stop me from posting them. And since any one of them was sufficient, I will give you the two that will cause the least “controversy”:
Some people written into the story as characters no longer wanted to be in the story. It was impossible to keep the story easily going without them. Using screen names of people for a long-running story like this turned out to be a bad idea.
Copyright issues. Specifically, the langauge contained in the footer at the bottom of each page.
There was no Pit dispute, or dispute about the series specifically. There was a dispute very indirectly related to it, in that it addressed copyright and “editorial” issues, but it is not worth discussing, and all parties are satisfied, friends and friendly, and the case is closed.
I have a new series I have started, based in the present-day, using the same genre (in which the events of Part 3, 4, and 5 are sometimes revealed via flashback). But it does not involve “screen names” of persons other than 1 or 2 people who I can trust not to suddenly change their minds. This is/will be posted on my own Board. Anyone who wants more info should mail me so as not to hijack this thread.
Err… no. Actually the fathom board predates this one. It was originally run on lamer software (WebBBS) and not nearly as popular. It was originally started back when the SDMB was on AOL as a place where people could post without having to worry about AOL’s TOS restrictions (cussing, etc).
It was mostly Ben (somebody) who was a kid who was obsessed with “ageism”. He thought that there shouldn’t be a minimum age to drive, for example. If a 7 year old could pass a driving test, they should get a license… that kind of thing. It went on and on and on.
The origins of MPSIMS as a forum. I believe it was DMGerr…crap! why can’t I remember his name!?! Anyway back on the AOL board there was General Questions and the forum for asking questions about the columns. General Questions started getting overrun by lots of inane threads that weren’t really questions and a lot of the regs thought they had no real point. So the above almost-mentioned poster started a thread called “Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share” and told us what he’d had for breakfast or some such stuff. Everyone piled in telling us about their belly button lint, a mosquito bite on their elbow, etc. It was a long thread full of people trying to top each other for pointlessness.
Then people started new threads and started putting MPSIMS in front… eventually it was just such a commonly accepted thing that we now have a forum of that name.
Opal, I think I remember the first such inane thread that appeared in AOL’s GQ; or at least, one that helped inspire some of the MPSIMS threads: someone (female, that’s all I remember) posted a link where you could get Titanic wallpaper for your computer. Oooh. Aaaaah.
