Who hooked you on Dope (or) Hi Vince!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

You can thank that sweet Canadian and fellow crackwhore Sue for my appearance to this board. I was hard at work playing backgammon when she waved the temptations of MPSIMS in front of my nose.

My first thought was, I would have to find a way to get even for yet one more addiction… but then, she taught me how to search and find people in my area on ICQ and now I just may have to send her her weight in chocolate as a thank you.

moans softly What would I do without you ma chere?!

I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!

22

It started out with “The Straight Dope” book.

I enjoy information. I also read some of David Feldman’s books (Imponderables) and Joel Achenbach (Why Things Are, etc.) However, Cecil Adams is the master. The information dispensed is invaluable, and I really appreciate the humor and his writing style. Ed helps keep the master in line, and Slug and his artwork completes the triumvirate.

I used to be on AOL, and they had the newsgroup on one of their intro banners. This whacky group of people is extremely addictive. When AOL disinvited the SDMB last year, I dropped out for a while and cancelled my AOL subscription. (There were some other things in my life going on at the same time, too, so I just needed some time away). A couple months ago, I signed up with another ISP, and thought I’d check out the web site. I had long since forgotten my password, so I started over in January, 2000.

This sig not Y2K compliant. Happy 1900.

23

My husband, UndeadDude, used to read the columns on AOL and forward me links. I’d read them and search through and find more… eventually I stumbled across the message boards… I don’t remember the exact date but it was late winter of 96 / 97 I think.

–
“it’s all real”
“I KNEW IT!!!”
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com

24

I first started reading the columns in the mid '80s – in a free paper in Norfolk, VA. Was hooked immeadiately. I found the books at about the same time (first from the library, then I bought 1 and 2 at used book stores – the rest I bought as they were released.) When I first got the internet (good old AOL), one of my very first searches was “Straight Dope.” You see, we had moved to San Diego and I wasn’t able to find a local paper carrying the columns — I was hoping that I’d find a list of papers carrying the column. Instead I found the board. Moved in right away, lurked for a brief period and then started posting. I don’t post as often as I used to and I never did post as often as some, but I’m still around and I’ve gotta say – in any incarnation, the board is as addictive as the columns themselves.

Jess

Remember the Straight Dope credo: It’s all about wiping out ignorance, not coddling the ignorant.

25

That’s how I found The Straight Dope too. I just realized that I have been on here almost as long as Opalcat. When AOL changed their payment plan from paying for x-amount of hours to 19.95 for unlimited hours back in 1997, I signed on and within a few days discovered my beloved Straight Dope.

Shadowfox

“The dead have risen, and they’re voting Republican!” - Bart Simpson

26

I was just sitting here, minding my own business, searching for Idiots,just to see what would it would find when I gradually get to dopes, and finally The Straight Dope Message Board. I think to myself, ‘This has got to be cool…’ click Hmmm… well, I wasn’t <i>entirely</i> wrong… (wolfish grin)
–Maybe not as interesting as some other posters’ stories, but this IS MPSIMS.

./^_/^\

< o | o >
.<_ | _>
…\U/

27

Mine’s boring. Jophiel has been a Doper since it came over from AOL and after he went to the Chicago meeting in November, I wanted to see what this was about and have something he and I could be interested in together. So then I could go to the next meeting with him. And I just did - went to Springfield this weekend.

When are you going to realize being normal isn’t necessarily a good thing?

28

My uncle got me started on The Reader when I was a child, back when they they still ran Pheobe and the Pigeon People and there was no such thing as The Simpsons.

Do they still have free personals? I would think that with the net they would almost be moot. You can send out nutty messages on the net without having to fill out an index card.

29

First encountered the columns in the local free weekly Southline soon after moving to Atlanta in fall 1986. Not long after Southline tanked sometime in 1987 or 1988, IIRC, found the first book, and picked up the next two as soon as I found them. The books pretty much had to sustain my habit for the next few years, until I came across alt.fan.cecil-adams. After periodically checking the newsgroup for a couple more years, I noticed the information about the move from AOL to the web site, and started checking the new columns more or less weekly. As you can see, I only started checking the message boards recently.

30

Oh, it started small, as these things always do. It was when I was in high school, in the library. I had a hankering for some useless knowledge. I had already read and re-read all of David Feldman’s Imponderables, Joel Achenbach’s Why Things Are, and all of that kid stuff. Suddenly, my eyes fell on a book I’d never seen before. It was “The Straight Dope”, by Cecil Adams. I vaguely remembered having read the name in a magazine article some years back. Wasn’t he supposed to be the world’s smartest human, or something? I picked up the book, and read it. And on that day, I ceased to be an innocent young girl, and became an addict.

I read it cover to cover, then re-read it several times. And when I almost knew it by heart, the library acquired “Revenge of the Straight Dope”. The pattern began anew. (I still haven’t read “Return of the Straight Dope”. If they’d had that particular selection, the risk of overdose would have been very real.) Around this time, I discovered that Cecil’s column runs in the local free alternative weekly. I was overjoyed. I now had a more stable source of regular fixes. So, I’d read the books and the columns, what was left for me to do? To what depths could I possibly sink next? You guessed it…

After I bought “The Straight Dope Tells All”, and read the hilarious threads excerpted from the old AOL board, I thought “Gosh, I’d love to participate in that! Too bad I don’t have net access…” Well, when I came to college, I acquired net access, but it was several months before I got around to checking out the board, which by this time had moved here. Finally I came, I lurked, I posted, I was hooked. You know what it’s like for college students seeking relief for the constant stress…

And that long and convoluted tale sums up the length of my involvement with all things Dope. Truly, if I had known back then where this would lead, I would have never picked up that book, but I did, and now I must live with the consequences of that act, as must we all.

An infinite number of rednecks in an infinite number of pickup trucks shooting an infinite number of shotguns at an infinite number of road signs will eventually produce all the world’s great works of literature in Braille.

31

Damn I’m gonna be eating alot of chocolate :wink:

We are, each of us angels with only one wing,and we can only fly by embracing one another

32

I’d been reading Cecil’s work since about the late 80’s when I’d grab a copy of the Reader whenever I got the chance. Alas, when I was away at school I never got the chance and so searched one night for “The Straight Dope” on ye ole WWW and found this site (sans newsgroup). While the AOL teaser that used to be on this site was tempting, it wasn’t enough to make me cross over into internet pariah status. Finally, Fate intervened and AOL and SD split ways. The week this board went up and public, I was there with eager fingers to sign on.

Zgystardst, “then free”? Last I checked (in November), I could still walk into about any bookstore, coffee shop, music store, etc in the city and snag a copy of the Reader (and quite a few places in the suburbs as well). Has this changed?

33

Cecil’s column was always the first thing I turned to in the DC City Paper. I was on alt.fan.cecil-adams for a couple years back in the mid-90s but got tired of dealing with Usenet. Never had AOL, so I was really happy to see the MB turn up here.

34

I discovered the Dope through an old boyfriend. His older brother had a copy of the Straight Dope, so I quickly read it. The funny thing is that now I don’t always read Cecil’s column. The MB sucked me in…I never had a chance. :smiley:

“I thought: opera, how hard can it be? Songs. Pretty girls dancing. Nice scenery. Lots of people handing over cash. Got to be better than the cut-throat world of yoghurt, I thought.” - Seldom Bucket

35

In '88 I was an isolated housewife with 2 screaming babies and a hankering for adult conversation. I would stalk people in libraries and bookstores, start long conversations with total strangers and tell the Jehova’s Witnesses that I was ready to convert.
Then my need for human interaction was quashed. I’d found the Straight Dope books. Years passed and I waited --sometimes waited and waited and waited-- for the next book. My children grew and they waited for the books.
Then the books started talking about the web site.
My children begged for an internet connection. The first place we went was to the Straight Dope.

36

Several years ago while traveling in Kathmandu, in a small used book store, with a few english language well traveled and well used books. The Straight Dope.Of course I had to have it, read it that night, traded it in for another book the next day, but I never forgot.

I’ve never been to Chicago, (unless you count that giant airport) or heard of the newspaper.

Couple of years later, I’m in Bali, used book dealer, another Straight Dope book, oh yeah, but I read it in one night and traded it back in for another book the next day. (what can I say? That’s how it’s done when you’re on the road for 6-10 mths)

Couple of few years go by I see a tv show, but then it disappears as quickly as it appeared.

Then I got on the internet. It had sort of dropped out of my mind.Though I had been accumulating questions ever since that first book.

I thought of it one day, came right over and have been hooked ever since.

The board being down was a bad time around my house. At the same time it was happening I was awaiting the electronic delivery of a manuscript from a friend applying to grad school from Zimbawe, with my help. So I spent the whole day checking my email every hour or so,( the server at her end was down!), only to discover I had NONE. Then over to the SD board, also DOWN. It was a black day,---------------- but we’re feeling much better now.

“Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.” Bob Dylan

37

A long long time ago, (wow, has it really been 12 years?!) I lived in Upstate NY, and was manager of a retail store. One day, I had to reprimand an employee because he had a book in his jacket pocket, and kept taking it out to read it while on the sales floor. After the third warning, I took the book from him, and hid it in the break room, and told him I was going to write him up.

Looking at the book, I said, “Straight Dope? What kinda freak is this kid?”
So I sat down to thumb through the book. I told Jon that he had to let me borrow it when he was done, and he did. I have been a huge fan of Cecil’s ever since. (I never did write him up-- how could I, after seeing what he was reading? Of course he couldn’t put it down!! but I still didn’t let him read on the sales floor)

When my hubby and I finally jumped into the '90s and got online, the first thing I did was look up Cecil Adams for listings on the internet. I checked in and read his column every week, and last spring realized that there was a message board on the site (it was new at the time.) So I have been checking in and lurking here for quite some time, too. I have read some of the funniest stuff ever on this MB (some of it, I’m sure wasn’t intended by its author to be funny, but humor’s where you find it, right?).

I can stop any time, though, really. I’m not addicted to the StraightDope or to this Message Board…
ahem

Self-centered to the extreme…
Chrome Toaster

38

My best friend, who goes by the handle Tymp (he doesn’t post too frequently), turned me on to the webpage. I never was one to visit MB’s so I just ignored it until he printed up a thread from the Pit and brought it home for me to peruse. I don’t ever post at the Pit, but I’ve been hooked ever since.

39

Well, you see, it started this way.

Oh more than ten years ago there was this free weekly newspaper that started up here in New York called the New York Press. I’d randomly pick it up when I needed something to read on the subway, at lunch, or whatever. Buried somewhere in the back I’d find a column called the Straight Dope, which I’d always read.

Later, I’d be sure to pick up the paper each week to read the Straight Dope (and the Carol Lay cartoons). I also got the books, of course. Every once in a while, I’d have to miss a week or two because I was travelling or something. It was horrible.

One time when I missed a week, I decided to search the internet. Lo and behold, there was last week’s column, along with an archive of all of the prior columns. I got my fix. I didn’t really focus on all of those other links.

After a while only clicking on Cecil’s current column and sometimes the classic column, I went to see what the Mailbag was. Neat stuff.

Once when really bored at work, I clicked on the message board to see how people could comment on the Master’s work. Originally, I just opened the Comments on Cecil’s Columns and on the Mailbag sections, wondering what of what possible interest there could be in those thousands of posts of people sharing mudane things and BBQing each other.

Then, one day, I clicked on general questions, and saw lots of people immediately answering the most obscure things asked from deep wells of personal knowledge. Later, I went into MPSIMS and got caught up in viewing little slices of people’s life. Then there was the BBQ pit, with people slapping out at others with vivid and creative imagery. Now, all I do all day is cruise the board, putting aside hours of real work.
So, in answer to the original question, it was Cecil, the Master. He initially hooked me and drew me in slowly, and then kept drawing me in until my life has become the oblivion it is today.