You ain’t seen nuttin yet.
LINK
Post here if you like it. 
I was a mod on a local MB and we had driven off a troll, somehow he ended up here and tried posting about us in the Pit. He was subsequently and rightly beaten down for his stupidity, and banned here as well, but one of the other mods had cottoned on to what he tried and linked us all here.
I was amazed and almost immediately in love, I registered right away but was so awed I kept quiet and lurked for months before risking a post or two. My usage is still 90% reading instead of posting and there are days I truly credit this board with salvaging what’s left of my sanity.
Fr’instance, I still participate in that local MB and quite often we’ll have concurrent discussions about what’s in the news. Being able to read this thread here when the same discussion topic on my board has nothing but ignorant and negative replies gives me hope.
I had always liked books that answered a bunch of weird questions, like THE BOOK OF LISTS and all, and one time in 1996 I noticed this weird paperback with snarky illustrations in the local bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. I didn’t buy it but read enough to see that there was a column in some alternative papers–went to a coffeehouse and picked up a copy of THE BOSTON PHOENIX and there was Cecil! Bought the books one by one (and man, are we overdue for a new one or what?) and noticed the website from the columns; didn’t get AOL so didn’t get on board until 1999, as McKenna.
Lost that name in the Winter of Our Missed Content and climbed back aboard as the lovable multi-reincarnated alley cat I am now.
I’d read the columns online and Threadspotting threads, and it all looked like so much fun. I thought I definitely had to get in on it. I haven’t regretted it yet.
chuckle It sure was!
In the mid-80’s I became a fan of the SD column through the local alternative weekly, D.C.'s the City Paper which carried Straight Dope as well as Life in Hell (I still look for Akbar and Jeff refs in the Simpsons), Chuck Shepard’s News of the Weird and an unbelievable amount of pornographic ads and personals, mainly of the: MWM, 40 seeking S/MAF 19-29 for discrete fun variety . Don’t read the weekly anymore – I guess it was largely the Dope that made it “appointment reading” for me.
I found the Straight Dope on line circa '99ish and lurked a long time on the SDMB before I finally joined in in that crazy ugly September of 2001 – when I reached out in my life in a number of ways.