I - uh - used to just read it for the articles… but now I post 
punk snot dead,
broccoli! (long time lurker, relatively new poster)
…or actually, one of them found me.
I was browsing through the reference section (bottom shelf) of a bookstore when someone went to put “The Straight Dope” back on the shelf (top shelf) and accidently dropped it on my head. The really small compact mass-market edition. Hurt like hell (the corner landed first), but the woman apologized. The book looked interesting (and cheap) and a fast read.
I bought the book.
Had to. It was a sign from the above, or Uncle Cecil. (But aren’t they interchangable?)
I was hooked.
I bought the rest of the books as they were released.
Our local weekly rag used to carry the columns (til the stupid editor decided to drop it in favor of “News of the Weird”).
I found the website.
I lurked.
I registered.
The rest is history.
So blame gravity for me being here.
A friend of mine (now a poster micilin) told me straightdope.com was a good read. I then spent a lot of time reading and decided to ask the man himself a question.
I asked and got a mail back saying that I could ask it here coz Cecil probably wouldn’t get to it.
I asked the question Crabs with samuri on their backs? and got some good replies, had a look around and stayed. 
It was my girlfriend’s fault.
She’s smart, but has a weakness for believing urban legends and whatnot.
So, to confute her, I’d use a search engine to reference whatever subject was at hand. Time after time, I would be directed to a Straight Dope column by Cecil Adams.
One day, my girlfriend came up with the “fact” that Hitler’s mom had wanted an abortion when she was pregnant with the embryonic Fuehrer but her Jewish doctor talked her out of it. Well, that seemed more than a little suspicious, so I searched the engines and also Straight Dope but couldn’t find a reference. So I e-mailed Cecil and got the response that Cecil gets a million billion queries a day but why don’t you try posting your question on the boards? And here I am…
ricepad told me about it, and told me I’d better be on my toes given the posters here. That was a challenge I couldn’t pass down.
The people of my home planet mumbled something about “exile” and just left me here.
I used to watch the TV show on A&E until it went off the air (one of the saddest moments of my life incidently) and forgot about it. One day I went on ask.com to see if anyone had ever had sex in space, and it directed me here. I got the answer I wanted and read all of the archives, but my dumb-ass didn’t even realize there was a message board for several days. When I figured that out, I registered and posted this question about Bo and Luke Duke: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=6743
I came here for the waters.
Like fierra, I got here through http://www.bored.com while I was, appropriately, bored at work. I read the index religiously for days, and then say “Threadspotting”. Mind you, I had NO idea how a message board worked and whatnot, but the heading of “How to Kill Evil Nazi Groundhogs” seemed interesting enough. I clicked, and read through the entire thread during one particularly slow day.
Still having no idea how a message board worked, I joined just to post to the thread, since I thought that the thread was an entity completely independant of anything. But, lo and behold, I saw the button labeld “Forum Jump” one day, clicked, and was amazed by the wealth of…errrrr…stuff that lay before me! From then on, I was quite definitely addicted.
Lurked.
Lurked.
Lurked for another year.
Lurked even more.
Registered.
Posted.
Lurked.
Well, let’s see. First, the Earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came. But they got too big and fat, so they all died, and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came, and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di’s clothes. Then I came to the Straight Dope.
That, or someone posted a link on http://www.twoplustwo.com which is a gambling theory website that I used to frequent.
Okay, I’m an ass: it should have been this.
Interesting to see about all y’all, though.
I came to the 'Dope via my lovely and talented wife, katrina.
She grew up in Chicago and knew about Cecil from, as they say, way back. She and her sister had the very first volume of collected columns – yes, the regular-paperback-sized thick book in teeny tiny print, not the later trade-paperback-sized reissue – in, I believe, a first-print edition. It got read a lot, so it’s fairly beat up (pages falling out, etc.); otherwise it would be a collector’s edition.
When she and I first started dating, I noticed the book on her shelf, and thought it looked interesting. Despite its decrepit condition, I brought it with me into the bathroom one day for a little excremeditation. And as I perused the tattered volume, it was as though the clouds opened, and the angels sang.
At the time, the message boards were still on AOL; the website was an informal archive (as I understand it) only loosely affiliated with the Reader. Because I had an AOL membership at that time, I frequented the boards, and posted a few times, but it wasn’t worth the AOL hassle (I felt) to participate actively. And meanwhile, we picked up the other Straight Dope volumes as they came available, so I got my fix elsewhere.
Then followed the great migration to the Web. I tagged right along, and found the SDMB had truly arrived. The new board format was a thousand times better than AOL’s, and the level of conversation was far more wide-ranging and free.
From then on, I’d occasionally share fun threads and features with my wife, who had, of course, been responsible for introducing me to the work of The Master. Finally, she could no longer resist the pull, and she registered herself. (I think it was the “funny things that happened during sex” thread that did it. Or, no, maybe it was one of Cecil’s columns denigrating epidemiological meta-analysis, and she registered so she could slap him around. I don’t really remember.)
And then a rogue asteroid, in a freakishly coincidental spiral orbit that kept it hidden behind the moon all the way in, slammed into the Earth, killing every living thing and reducing the planet to twirling shards of silicate. Oh, wait, has that not happened yet? Hmmm, maybe I should include a spoiler warning on this post. Sorry if I gave anything away…
A friend from high school, Drain Bead, sent me here when Satan proposed to her. I’ve been addicted ever since.
Thanks alot, Libby… :rolleyes:
My friend had AOL and read the AOL site frequently. He would often quote things or share interesting tidbits and I was jealous. So one day, I decided to look up straightdope.com (I don’t have AOL). I was hooked. The content was decent but the articles were great. NOTE: This was in the days before the great jump to the web. I lurked. I read the weekly articles. I lurked. The great jump to the web happened. I lurked some more. Finally, I came across a threadspotting about favorite children books. I was bored at work so I registered and posted. The rest, they say is history.
10 years ago I was in Barnes & Noble looking for Christmas presents. The words “Straight Dope” just jumped out at me from the cover of the first book. I started looking through the book and bought it. My favorite columns from that book are about “Le Petomaine” and the infamous “Shaking hands with Jesus”.
Read most of the next 2 books, and last year I decided to do a web search, and found this site. Read the online columns and the forums for almost a year before I joined this motley crew in August.
I first became acquainted with Cecil and the Straight Doper from an article in the Reader’s Digest. I thought “this is my kind of stuff” and saved the magazine. A year later, I bought the first book and was hooked. I still have the magazine article.
When I got on-line, the Straight Dope was one of the first websites I checked out.
The straight dope used to run in the LA Reader (back when there was an LA reader). I typed the url on a whim once, and have been happy ever since.
I started reading the SDMB because, well, once a week was no longer a big enough fix. Lurked for a very long time in General Questions…the people who populate that board are fairly amazing.
I registered so I could make my first post…
About three years ago when SD was still on AOL, my friend gave me a link to one of the articles and I thought it was interesting and stored it in the back of my memory. In um… umm… well, right before AOL kicked them off, I was doing a report on the shroud of Turin and remembered Cecil’s article about it, so I decided to visit again, and saw they it was moving to the web. I noticed the message boards but didnt pay much attention to them, then one day I got really bored and started reading them. I lurked for a long time, then I registered in the beginning of May
I came here via the Whad’Ya Know trivia quiz, at http://notmuch.com . They sometimes cite Cecil in the review of their answers. I found their site after listening to the radio show on NPR. I looked in the SD archive and found threadspotting and the Evil Nazi Groundhogs and other good stuff. I love this place!