I got to wondering today what first brought me to the SDMB. Ah, I remember. It was this thread. It’s the monumental pimple popping thread. Don’t click that link if you get squicks. A couple of years ago I was surfing the net and googled “pimple popping” (you would be suprised at the amount of info out there). One of the results was a link to that thread. I read the whole thing in horrified fascination. These are MY PEOPLE! I started lurking then, and a little over a year ago I joined up.
So that’s my story of how I got here. How about you guys? What brought you to the Dope?
I was a fan of Cecil’s books, and while I was looking for info from one of the books, I came across the messageboard. I lurked for a long time before becoming a member, and I lurked again as a member for quite a while before posting anything.
I found the columns from bored.com a few years ago and loved them. Checked out the board after seeing all the Threadspotting stuff and happily discovering a board populated by smart, funny people who abide by basic grammar rules. Lurked for a summer because I was home from college and only had access to my parents’ dial-up internet. Signed up after I got back to school and its wonderful high speed connection.
I really have no idea. I used to be a big, huge fan of televisionwithoutpity.com’s forums so it is likely that I stumbled across it via a link from there. I do know that I spent a very long time just in general questions before I ventured forth. I actually braved the Pit before I wandered much into Cafe Society. Still don’t go there much. I guess I’m far more opinionated and mundane than I originally thought.
I do know I go into deep body convulsions if my membership lapses. I’ll check my join date after this post and figure out which thread it was that got me to open my pie-hole.
I wandered over after someone over at Heartless Bitches posted a link. Threadspotting that day was the famous Evil Nazi Groundhogs thread (now, sadly, lost to the ether).
I got caught up in the Straight Dope series on A&E back in 1996 and 1997, and found out about the site from there. Mike Lukas was the host, and by God, it was the greatest television series to ever be cancelled!
Well, I first became aware of the Straight Dope thanks to my cousin telling me about the short-lived TV show. So, I guess that must have been in 1996. From there I found the board on AOL. At that time I think I was using the handle “LdyCaerie” and wasn’t particularly active. I was just fifteen and was awed by all of the smart people. Years went by, I remained peripherally aware of it. Then, when the FameTracker forums went down, I needed a new message board fix and so started spending more and more time lurking here.
Finally, somebody posted a thread in which J. M. Barry of Peter Pan fame was identified as a dwarf and I was overcome with my need to correct this error. I had to come out of lurk and join.
An AOL ad of some sort, probably, way back when. I don’t remember exactly, but I do remember thinking “*THE * Straight Dope? On fAOL? No shit?” and thus began my lurking.
If you mean the pre-internet Dope, then it was about a week after the first book was available. Straight Steve was from Chicago, and practically had kittens in the bookstore when he discovered he could enlighten our whole little clique with The Masters wisdom. I read a few pages standing there, turned around, bought my own copy and have been hooked ever since.
I found it through the original AOL board and site. It was fascinating, and I participated for a good while, then it kind of fizzled out when I went to college. I joined back up in 2004, then let the account languish for a while, then I paid for a subscription again in the past few months.
The Merkin article was one of the first ones I’d read by Cecil.
I was introduced to the books in the early nineties (1994 I think). His books became my college version of a coffee table book (although, err, coffee was not the umm “stimulant” that the table was used for mostly. More like tea.) It came to be quite a past time for friends to read the various articles while we “drank coffee”.
Then while bouncing around AOL on my new mac, I ran into the Straightdope web site, and started hanging out. I am apparently quite infamous for one of my postings there, but I will not acknowledge it quite yet. I just have recently run into a thread where someone said, “One time on AOL this guy came in and said…”, and realized that was me.
My caveman clan was cold, and we saw this other clan had invented fire, so we came over and lo, there was the AOL SD site. I read the columns for a while, and then started participating on the boards.
I used to read Cecil’s columns, then the newspaper that carried the got bought out, and they dropped Cecil. A few years later, I got my first PC, and the first site I searched for was the Straight Dope.
I used to moderate a little local message board, and after a huge board meltdown, we finally banned this total jerkwad poster. Somehow he found his way here and started threads like “Do you think people should ban people on other boards for saying things like this?” which of course got him the hilarious smackdown it deserved. Our admin noticed a lot of traffic on our site since the jerkwad had linked it, he had the hilarious idea that members here would be outraged on his behalf and go there to protest his banishment.
I came to see what all the fuss was about, saw him getting what he so richly deserved and realized I was home.
He was banned almost before I’d finished registering.
I was a big fan of the books back in the 80’s, actually. Well, the book, anyway, until the 2nd one came out in 1988.
I had only intermittent access to the columns in the local alternative papers thru the 90’s. I noted via the alt papers that the columns were available online on AOL, but not having AOL, I didn’t access them.
Then I saw that they’d moved off AOL, and began reading the columns online in 1999. Much more reliable than finding a copy of the local alt paper!
I’d pop in on the message board and browse too, but didn’t get around to joining until Spring of 2000.
A boyfriend loaned me the first book sometime around 1989. I was hooked. I was also on the 'net, so I used gopher and archie and usenet and things like that to search for more.
I joined the alt.fan.cecil-adams group almost as soon as it was created and eagerly devoured the columns that Little Ed started posting there. Then I heard there was a message board, but it was on AOL, where I was not.
“grrrrrrrrrr!!” says I. Kept checking in to afcd and came right on over as soon as I saw the Web board announced. Been here ever since.
I followed a link from someone that was making the point that there were some really nasty message boards out there. . . and he linked to this one! And since the message board I saw this on was pretty darn rude in my estimation, I thought I’d check it out just to see what really rude was. But I found all these really nice people who weren’t rude at all.
In bewilderment, I PMed the guy that posted the link and asked him what he was talking about and he said that he hadn’t been on here for a while and maybe it has changed.
So I lurked for a real long time, thinking that people might all of a sudden turn rude and nasty, but I haven’t noticed it yet. So here I am.
So nobody get all rude and nasty on me. You’ll shatter all my illusions.
