I have looked to see if there was a thread similar to this, but have not found it so…
What brought you to the SDMB originally? I started my addiction to this forum when one day I had my heart set on finding out exactly what would happen if I shot a T-Rex with a Barrett .50 cal. Can’t believe that I found it, after I read the post, I was hooked. After reading the same thread over and over to see if I might have missed something, I started a 48 hour SD session. Now maybe a few hours a day. So my question is what brought each of you here? How often do you Straight Dope? Looking forward to your responses.
So long ago, I have no idea specifically. I know I found the boards by reading Cecil’s columns. I probably ended up there during my urban legends / mythbusters / snopes phase.
I was drawn to a religious thread while attempting to cement my very weak faith. Faith didn’t take…but I love this board. There are so many smart and knowledgeable people here. I learn something everyday.
Yeah, we’ve done this one before but whatever, we can do it again.
Read the books when I was a kid and loved them, and then when I was in college I found the message board. I lurked for a pretty long while before participating much.
Been here since about 2000… right after the board came off AOL. (Whenever I see the youngsters bitch about how the board is run now I chuckle because I can remember people complaining that they liked the old Aol board better.)
I wanted to find out the origin of the term ‘hot box’ (like you’d say to your friend with whom you are sharing a cig, “Oh man. You hot boxed it!” when he drags on it too fast & the fire gets long and threatens to fall off.)
Somehow I found my way here and started a GQ thread about it. Been addicted ever since.
Had a personal internet black out for a few years but before and after my PIBO I spend at least 45 minutes or so here a day. More when there’s a really lively thread.
Started with the column in a local alternative paper, then found the books in used bookstores and this was one of the first places I searched for when we got our first computer.
I don’t post a lot, because generally someone’s already said what I would have said, and with more humour and eloquence.
Also, I wanted to find out what percentage of men shave their testicles, and how this percentage varies across age groups. Y’know, the important stuff.
I really do love the hypothetical situations presented, I do think that the average poster or member here has above average intelligence, which is more than I can say for other forums I have bumped into.
I had read Cecil’s column for years. Maybe three or four years back, I thought, “what the heck. I’ll see what this message board is like.”
I was no stranger to forums, but the SDMB charmed me with it’s high level of intelligent discourse and insane knowledge. I also like that it skews a bit older - I’m 30, but I got so sick of lots of other forums that I used to read being all teenagers and college freshman. Nothing wrong with being that age, but I’m past it. I respect wisdom and intelligent discussion.
Message boards I left and never looked back:
Penny-Arcade - was great when I was still in college, but skews a bit young for my tastes (though I am still a gamer)
Tom’s Hardware - seemed to get completely trash around 2005 or so. Seemed to go along with the greater commercialization of the site. Site is still good for hardware reviews, though
Fark - way too many trolls. Not on a 4chan level, but every post will have them. Almost impossible these days to have a reasonable discussion without twelve idiots popping in to Godwin the whole thing.
I stumbled across the first book in a bookstore eons ago, and bought each subsequent book as they were published. (I’m mentioned in one of them, I think the 4th. Quite a feather in my cap…TroyMcClureSF had me autograph his copy at a Dopefest, haha) Not sure how I stumbled upon it on the internet, but I’ve been on since the AOL days.
When you logged onto AOL back in the dark dim days of longago (circa 1994-97), there was a sort of secondary screen page after the main “WELCOME!” screen that had a batch of vertically skinny horizontally wide buttons, each of which went to a content “area” such as “Travel” and “Business” and whatnot… one of the more interesting ones was called “The Exchange”: posting areas where you could create topics within various forums and others would reply and you’d reply to their stuff and so on.
As the internet grew and AOL’s market share fell, AOL switched their model to a flat-rate monthly plan (optional at first but many folks went for it), and these two factors together sort of gave them less reason to maintain a lot of addictive content in AOL-only areas. The Exchange got axed. I was jonesing for somewhere new to post when the AOL straight dope message board got “featured” (advertised on the main WELCOME! screen) and I went there and started posting. It was after the “pushpins” switchover occurred, for those who remember that. 1997.
Way back when, my company heard about this internet thing and asked me to see what was out there about our company and our business. I was paid to surf the web! Disney was one of our clients so I found lots of fun stuff about them… which eventually lead me to snopes. I was one of the “old regulars” there for a long time. There was a time when several people from the Dope came over to snopes so I decided I should see what it was all about. I went there (here) and could read the archives but not the message board because I wasn’t on AOL. I soon realized that one of the favorite books that I had been given “When did wild Poodles roam the earth? by Ed Zotti” came from this group. Back in 1999 the boards became available to everyone and I joined… posting a whopping 0.22 posts per day ever since.
