the message board i was using went behind a paywall …so i looked around and found this place …it looks diverse …and that is what made me sign up …
I like the new name!
I was looking for a larger board with stronger moderation. I appreciate moderating which does not allow “socks” or posters having multiple accounts.
I belonged to another forum for quite a while until I got sick of it. It was touted as “The Safest Place on the Internet” and granted, it is a very enjoyable board - but the rules drove me insane. You can’t cuss, you can’t even imply-cuss (WTF gets word-filtered to “Sweet Monkey Fritters”, for example) and I found myself filtering my posts so heavily so as not to accidentally “offend” anyone that I ended up saying “screw it” and not posting at all. Also, a nosy co-worker started posting there, figured out my username pretty quick, and I didn’t want her privy to my shit.
I think I was looking for advice for people who didn’t get their driver’s licence until they were an adult when I stumbled across this board. I remembered watching the TV show with my then-boyfriend many years ago and we LOVED it. So I signed up and stayed.
My girlfriend (now wife) came across the SDMB way back in the day and encouraged me to join up. Most of the reading of the board that I’ve done has been over her shoulder, but I’ve had busy fits of posting off and on ever since.
My co-worker just told me about an issue that’s going on in the forum I previously belonged to and let me just say that I am SO THANKFUL that I got outta there and found you guys.
I won’t elaborate, but DANG some people need to get off the Internet and get some fresh air and a life!
The TV Show was my first exposure to Cecil. Then I looked for a website several years after the show was cancelled.
If I remember right, and that’s a big if, it was stumble upon that brought me here. I was stumbling through various conspiracy websites, when it linked me to a thread on here about 9/11.
Or…
I was stumbling through humor related websites, and it linked me to the thread about the blimp attack.
(I read a lot of threads that day, but I’m pretty sure it was one of the two that I mentioned.)
Either way, I was hooked, and just stayed around. I lurked for years before I ever posted.
Read the books. This was the first place I looked up when I got access to the internet. If I had registered right away, I’da been a '99er. But I didn’t because I my internet access was at work and I didn’t want to mix business with pleasure, so to speak.
Imagine that, not surfing at work!
I must have stumbled on this site while commenting on (or trying to) something in Yahoo news. In that area (arena is more like it) it’s like you have to elbow your way in and jump up and shout in order to be heard. Since I kind of tend to start new things that way anyway—jump right in, elbows flailing…then stop, look around and ask, “Now, what is it were all doing here?” I guess that worked.
Unfortunately I brought that demeanor here, at first shouting and flailing…sort of making “drive-by posts” I call them. (Like drive-by shootings?) Then I started revisiting more often, really got interested in some of the subjects and got to “know” some of the posters and realized this isn’t an anonymous board at all. It had never even occured to me to lurk.
So to any and all that I offended, I apologize and sorry for being such a dope. (lol Get it?)
I don’t remember how I found it, but I was on the old AOL version of the board, then skip several years, found this, lurked for a year or two or three, then joined. Been here something like 3 years I think.
I found the dope via a link on the “Rational Skepticism” forum where I’d visited to find ammo in an ongoing argument with a fundamentalist acquaintance. Don’t remember what dope thread the link led to - I think the original search terms were something like “uncertainty about God” - but I liked what I read here…lurked for a month or so then took the plunge.
SS
Long ago, back during my days of naïveté regarding all things WWW, I committed the grievous error of not back-checking the facts regarding a story emailed to me about hypodermic needles lurking behind the levers of your friendly neighborhood gas station pump :eek: before passing it on to others in a misguided - yet I assure you, genuine - attempt to warn others of such dastardly goings-on
(Alas. I may have learned my lesson, but my dear Aunt G has not, despite my repeated attempts to bring her forward into the light of knowledge.).
::hangs head in shame::
Yeah, that one suckered me in, kiddies, hook line AND sinker. Who knew?
After being taken to task over it - albeit gently - by a good friend, he showed me the error of my ways and among the sites he sent to me to do my back-checking at From Now On, was indeed ‘The Dope’.
Not sure when I signed on, but it’s been a good four years since I saw ‘The Light.’
All hail Cecil!! 
Ditto…I have been aware of Unca CeCe since about 1976, and the above is the path I took, arriving here at the very end of the very brief AOL era (does anyone have the exact date of the change? Does our signup date reflect the AOL days, or only since the web? ).
Is '99er a thing, or something you just coined?
Stoid
'99er
I’ve used it before myself. I too coulda been a 99er if I had registered right away – I even read the Dope regularly on AOL. But after signing up I pretty much lurked for a couple years anyway so I guess it evens out.
Google…what else? I can’t remember what I was looking up exactly, I think it may have been something about ignorance actually, and behold, I found the Dope. I’d considered joining other MB’s before, but there was always something about each one I looked at that was strange or otherwise bizarre, then when I read the SDMB’s banner about fighting ignorance I couldn’t pass it up.
I’ve searched for knowledge all my life, usable and useless alike, but never have I been party to such a thirst for information and general enlightenment with a strong twist of humor. Thank you SDMB, you may have saved my life (or started it, I’m not sure :D).
I’ve seen it used, 'della.*
*Pepperidge Farm remembers.
I stumbled upon the Dope whilst using my brand new Packard Bell as a citizen of the AOL community.
There were so many really smart people posting here that I was too intimidated to do anything but lurk - for a very loooong time. But then I got really drunk one night -and, well, here I am!
Damn, if I understand you correctly, that was indeed a long time: looks like 7 years! Wow.
May I give you a digital hug?