I found the first book in a bookstore while on business back in about 1990 and loved the tone and most of the content. A couple of years later I found the weekly column in a local free newspaper.
In about 1996 I found the site online at AOL and started reading it pretty much everyday and posting now and then, a pattern that continues to the present day. Moved over to the current site in '99 along with a bunch of the rest when they dumped AOL.
I used to browse the 33s at my local library as a kid. I read the first three Straight Dope books that way. Then, when I hit high school, my family got AOL, and I found the AOL boards. I lurked on them–I might’ve posted, but that was more than ten years ago, so fuck if I remember. Then they kind of went away, and I was sad, and forgot about it a while until I found the new website. So I registered in 2001, and have been more-or-less regularly posting ever since. Though I don’t overshare like I did in college. Thank God.
I had been told that like, seriously, like, tampon manufacturers were putting asbestos in tampons, to like, make you bleed more.
Well, it didn’t sound right to me and I didn’t know what else to do and it was 1999 and I worked at a Kinko’s so I got on the computer and knew I had enjoyed the TV show so I looked it up and emailed either Lynn or Tuba. Whichever it was wrote me back and said no, that it was a rumor and I think pointed me to some sites, maybe this one, about these magical things called facts. She ended it with “so keep plugging away” and I thought - “These are my people” and I joined in 2000 as ellykat, then changed my name to Rez, then divorced another (short term) doper and I’ve been here all the time. 
ETA - I also asked about Mike, the host of the show, because I thought he was cute. Must have made an impression if I still remember his name.
I devoured the books when I was 14, then saw an ad for the message boards on the main page of AOL when I was 18, and my head exploded.
I don’t know. It was so long ago I don’t remember.
I knew Aesiron from another message board, way back when, and he mentioned it. I lurked for a few years and eventually signed up.
I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but I was linked to one of Sampiro’s threads.
Woman behold thy daughter, daughter thy mother, & BOTH OF YOU LOSE MY NUMBER!.
I found Cecil maybe 7 years ago.
I really liked his no-nonsense approach to discrediting false information.
Maybe 4 years ago I learned of the message board here.
I started reading it. I was active on a few message boards at the time.
As the last few years passed, I became increasingly disinterested in my old boards. They were sometimes fun, but as I’ve entered adulthood I’ve found they just don’t engage me like they used to. The SDMB, as I’ve found it, is full of intelligent adults and lots of fascinating info.
So this is my primary message board these days.
Message boards I’ve abandoned:
Tom’s Hardware - they did a forum reboot a few years ago, most of the good posters left. Maybe it’s still good, I wouldn’t know. After the reboot it felt like a room full of strangers.
Penny Arcade
Gah, it pains, pains me to say I’ve outgrown these forums. It just got to the point where like every other post was “OMG! I’m going to college! How can I meet fellow nerds!”
Which is fine, but I’m approaching 30 now. It just started to feel old. I take comfort in the fact that I am still a few years younger than Tycho and Gabe.
WoW forums - About three years ago I gave up WoW “Cold Turkey”. Of course, I still relapse every few months and play a bit, but the old obsession is dead. I miss my guild, I miss the friends I made playing WoW; I don’t miss the fanatical obsession I used to have with the game. Regardless, I don’t visit the forums more than once or twice a quarter.
I learned about Cecil and Straight Dope from Mahaloth during college. I lurked for a little while before signing up. I’m still primarily a lurker (less than 1000 posts in 10 years), but I’ve been a little more active lately.
That’s from 2005, how’d you find that? I just did a “Find all posts by Equipoise” search to see it if showed my very first post, and the earliest is from November of last year! The earliest from Sampiro is from March of this year. What happened to all the older posts?
To answer the OP, I had read The Straight Dope for years, and enjoyed the short-lived TV show. I’d known lissener for about 12 years and he told me about the web site and message board. I didn’t post a lot for years.
I really got into it when Fellowship of the Ring came out. I was a complete ignorant noob going in to the movie (I only went because I was a Peter Jackson fan), and came out a raging fangirl. I wanted to learn more about the story and background (this was before I decided to go ahead and read the books) so I started reading the threads here and at Home Theater Forum. I’d been burned by other message boards and Usenet newsgroups full of Tolkien fans who were oh-so-snobby and scornful of the movie and the stupid newbies hungry for information. Here and HTF were different. For the most part people were very respectful and very helpful. I was able to get the characters straight and learn background and lots of interesting tidbits, so my next viewing was much much richer. I still appreciate that. I hung around both message boards for a few years but eventually stopped posting at HTF a few years ago. I’m still here. Duh.
Why-a-horse? Why-a no chicken?
I somehow stumbled upon Cecil’s columns online. After reading these off and on for awhile, I think I looked at something in the threadspotting. It was amazing, people actually typing in complete, capitalized, and punctuated sentences, and typing things other than “your gay,” and “no u r.” Plus, I liked all the interesting stuff that people talked about here so eventually I signed up and even had the audacity to post every now and then. Any message board that prides itself on fighting ignorance is a winner in my book. 
I stumbled across the board on a random internet search, I think. I became a regular reader when Scylla’s infamous groundhog thread started. Sadly, I don’t seem to have contributed much, but at least I managed to meet a few cool folks out of it.
My ex-husband linked me to a few of the articles back in the AOL days. I started posting to the message boards there, got to know a lot of people. Then they left AOL and came here, so I came too.
Friend told me about some of the articles. A few years later, I was bored at work and just joined.
I, too, stumbled onto the Straight Dope main page via bored.com in around 2004-ish. I started reading the threadspotting section, and became a huge fan (the original “what creeps you out?” thread in particular got me interested). I lurked on and off for literally YEARS (the idea of having to pay to post was a bit of a turn-off), before a recent “what’s your favorite/least favorite Disney movie” thread finally broke me. I joined in September and haven’t looked back.
There was a link to the SD on the front page of AOL one day. I had seen the show on A&E and enjoyed it, so I clicked the link.
That was in 1997.
I started reading the column around 1988 in the Washington CityPaper. (That’s also where I discovered Matt Groening’s Life in Hell.)
I never knew there were SD books or a TV show.
I found the site a couple years ago when searching for a list of the “Censored Eleven” Looney Tunes.
I started reading the MB a month or so ago, and first posted in this thread, because I like coins.
A friend of mine at work is a big fan of Cecil’s and got me hooked. Too bad we can’t access this from work, I’d never get a thing done
I’ve written my story a couple times before, but this seems like a nice thread to tell it again.
I was posting on a message board that had lots of argumentation. One of the most aggressive posters there said that although some might think that that message board was aggressive and hostile, it was nowhere near as aggressive and hostile as one that he had abandoned called the Straight Dope. Being the curious sort that I am, I decided to check out this place that was so aggressive and hostile that this extremely aggressive person thought was so outrageous.
When I got here, I read posts about kitties and then went to forums where people were politely answering questions and then saw some people mostly arguing politics. At the time, I think, the people in the Pit were discussing rules, so that was pretty calm too. So I PMed that guy back and asked if I had gotten the right place and linked him back to this rather tame place. He wrote back that it must have changed a lot.
So thanks everyone, for changing character just as I was visiting and then staying that way.
It will always be an urban legend for me that this place was aggressive and hostile at one time.
It’s still that way after every post, right? 