What Made You Join The Straight Dope?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Perhaps this should be in ATMB - but it was more of a curiousity thing for me.

I joined SDMB 2 years ago this month because I had just started dating kneadtoknow and he told me he posted here a lot. He would tell me about funny comments people made in threads, or information he had gotten reading here.

I didn’t want to invade his space, so I stayed away at first. Then he started sending me threads he thought I could add input to, and I started replying. Then I started The Ron Thread and people seemed to like it - and then I was an addict and SDMB became part of my daily life.

How about you? How did you first learn about SDMB and what got you ‘hooked’?

2

'99 - '00. California. I was working as a temp in a pretty shit job, but with lots of flexibility. My boss actually gave me the following direction: “When you have nothing to do, you can always surf the web.”

So I surfed. I think I burned through most of Google when I decided to look-up and re-read Cecil’s columns as I was a devoted Straight Dope reader of the past.

Discovered this site. Discovered this site had a messageboard. Decided to join a message board for the first (and so far only) time. The rest is history.

3

I had picked up a couple of books back in the 1970s. I had searched on the internet but not found anything since The Dope was on AOL. Then at one point I got lucky and found that The Dope had hit the real internet when I did a search on Schrodinger’s Cat. I’ve been here ever since.

4

Stumbled on it, and became of regular reader of the Cecil articles. checked out a couple threads in threadspotting. Stayed at this point for about 5 yrs. Bored at work and signed up, now its the best human interaction I get all day. (at work anyway, the husband is pretty awesome for conversations)

5

Came over from TheOneRing.net after the big ‘rewrite LotR’ thread. Yeah, sorry, I contributed to our Winter of Missed Content.

I didn’t hang around on the site after that, I actually went to Snopes, found out a bunch of people there were Dopers, and over time I realized I was spending more time here than at Snopes and liked it better. Snopesters are nice, but some of them are not the brightest tools in the shed. So I stopped lurking and signed up.

6

I was a lurker for two years, than someone impugned Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. So I had to step in to defend him.

7

I stumbled on the SD while doing some research for a law firm I worked at back in 2003. It was this thread about someone sticking their wedding ring up their nose that made me join, though. I was hooked from then on out.

8

I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I lurked for yonks before joining. Can’t remember what made me finally sign up.

9

I don’t remember. Interesting conversations going on? That must have been it.

10

But how did you first find out about it?

11

I was searching for information about something (I forget what) and stumbled onto a very funny thread about the buttons we see on everyday things like computers, etc. For example the “resume” button on your cruise control, which, no matter how many times you punch it, will not create and print your CV. I then backtracked to the home page and began reading Cecil’s columns: all of them. Short hop to the message board, where I lurked for about 20 minutes before joining.

12

I was a regular reader of Cecil’s columns in the Chicago Reader, which I picked up on the way home from work on Thursday or Friday. When I changed the way I went home and no longer went past any place that distributed it, I found that the columns were also available online. Then I saw the link to the forums and started lurking. I signed up when I realized that I might be able to get the answer to a question that had been bugging me for years.

13

I was searching for humourous sites and stumbled on this one.

14

Oh. Uh, bored.com had a link to the Straight Dope homepage.

15

My brother made me do it.

16

I had read the books whenever they came out, and one day I decided to check out the website. After lurking for a bit, I decided that my uninformed opinion was just as good as most mooks’, so I joined up and have been making a pain of myself ever since.

17

I had read Cecil’s books. Then one day at work, a co-worker mentioned that he had noticed that the Straight Dope had a web site. So I could read Cecil’s columns online, and I did. In the process, I also noticed that it had a message board, so I read that too. I must have lurked for a year or more on the SDMB before signing up.

18

As others have said, I was researching something which I don’t remember now and clicked on a link to The Dope front page. I started reading Unca Cecil’s columns and then noticed a link to a message board. I clicked on the link, read a few threads and when I stopped laughing my ass off and caught my breath, joined up. It’s still the best message board evah!

19

I read a thread in the snopes forum that mentioned this place. What a godsend – I was on the verge of terminal (ha) boredom at work. I didn’t have my own computer, so I lurked for several years. The Dope provided me with endless hours of enjoyment during those mind-numbingly dull weekend evening shifts. If fulfills the same need today, distracting me from the (marginally) less-tedious doldrums of my current day shift routine.

20

I went from reading Fast Food Nation to vegetarianism to a website called Vegan Porn, which provided a link to Cecil’s answer to some question. I had read the Straight Dope books, so I immediately got interested in the message board, where I lurked for a long time. I couldn’t think of a user name, and besides, I was having plenty of fun just listening to the smart ones talk.

One day, there was a discussion of Stephen King’s story The Mist. I suddenly knew my user name, had something to say, signed up, said it…killed the thread!