Why did you join the Dope?

Hi fellas, I’ve been lurking here for quite a few years and have only joined a few months ago. I haven’t posted all that much just a few here and there but I’ve always wondered how people got hooked, as it were, to this message board.

The only other message board I frequent is themagiccafe but that’s because I get practical information and can participate in in-depth discussions on my hobby. But this board, this strange but beautiful board is just something else. From serious discussions on why ET doesn’t call, bizarre stories like the blimp from hell, and tremendous kindness and generosity as in that thread where a Doper was asking about tips on how to live on a small amount of money and it ended up with other dopers sending money to him/her.

Your peculiar and often funny stories plus your friendship for people whom most of you have never met face-to-face are the reason I’ve lurked here for so long and keep coming back. What about you?

-Cheers-

Well, your OP is quaint, but it doesn’t give one inkling as to why *you *joined. So, why did you?

I joined after reading the books, watching the TV show, joining and reading alt.fan.cecil-adams, reading the online archives, and lurking on first the AOL board, then the web board.

Back when I still subscribed to real-live magazines that were made out of real-live paper, I had a subscription to MacWorld. In one small article back in early 2001, it mentioned the Dope as a message board aimed at asking questions and fighting ignorance, amongst other cool websites one could peruse at leisure. I had never heard of Cecil Adams or The Straight Dope before.

3 hours later, I was hooked. I started with the Cecil article archives, then eventually migrated to the boards, and lurked for a long time. It’s a unique place on the net, and I find MBs a great, semi-anonymous way to read and discuss things you’d rarely ever get a chance to read or discuss amongst people IRL. The diversity of education, background, world perspective and expertise this place attracts all bent on everything from general questions, debates, philosophy, science, art, games, politics, meandering thoughts, sincere discussions, to just ranting and venting, and without the overwhelming amount of whackos and twats you get elsewhere. It’s awesome.

Finally, I just started commenting here and there, until I found myself posting more often, starting threads, and actually meeting some of the Dopers (which I’m glad I got up the nerve to do, they’re amazing people – you know who you are).

This place keeps me centered in a weird way. I’ve been coming here daily for so long, I can always count on a laugh or a good, interesting read, and the occasional melt down from some poor sap in The Pit, where if the Dope someday goes away, it’d leave a hole in the internet… at least for me. It’s honestly helped shaped the way I think and form my own opinions now, and I have the real people who post here constantly, and inspire me, to thank for that.

Well I joined because of the diversity of stuff you can read on this board. Anyone can find at least one thread or forum that will pique their interest. And ditto what **cmyk **said.

“I can always count on a laugh or a good, interesting read, and the occasional melt down from some poor sap in The Pit, where if the Dope someday goes away, it’d leave a hole in the internet… at least for me. It’s honestly helped shaped the way I think and form my own opinions now, and I have the real people who post here constantly, and inspire me, to thank for that.”

(heheh, don’t know how to quote a certain bit of a post :D)

1 part outlet for attention, 1 part writing practice, 1 part hilarity, and 1 part community. Shake well.

For the pie, I joined for pie.

But seriously: I lurked for a while after a pal in the US told me about the site.

The intelligence, wit and general good taste of most posters had me hooked

i used to read the Straight Dope back in 2003, and had no idea that there were forums on this thing. And then when i found out about them I started to read them in bits and pieces, but it was really when they started hosting Mafia games here, that I started to read the Dope more and more- so in about 2006/07. Then i joined the Dopers offboard mafia site, and from there ended up here on the Dope and happily enjoying it.

I shared an apartment with an American girl back in 2001, who told me the Straight Dope would be right up my alley - and she was right. I didn’t start lurking in the forums until maybe a year ago though and then the urge to post something just escalated :slight_smile:

And here I am now.

I used to read The Reader when I lived in Chicago.

When I moved to LA, I had a question nobody could answer, and I remembered “The Straight Dope” column in The Reader and sent my question via email

I didn’t find it odd at the time, but my question was picked and two weeks later they not only had a cool graphic, but Cecil answered it in a long, and very funny column. Then, it had so many replies that they did another column on the subject as a follow up.

Only when reading the follow up did I happen to notice there was a forum…and well, ever since…

I joined because several people on my LiveJournal list were members. I peeked around a bit, and in spite of the silly “Cecil” stuff, I thought it was an interesting place.

I followed a link through bored.com Feb 2000 and read every single article in the entire archive. When I finished all the articles, I was bored again, so I followed the link to “message board” not sure what to expect. Since I had never been on a message board. I think that I saw a thread asking why nuns wear black–or a great debate about the morality of rodeos. One of them prompted me to sign up, I think.

I was once a huge LoTR fangirl and I stumbled upon this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=138905. I’ve been lurking here ever since.

1/1/01

It was a strange time… I’d searched for the reason behind the lyrics of American Pie a few months beforehand and came up with an article by Cecil. I mostly stuck to his articles and confused one of my sophomore year high school buddies with random knowledge. He eventually found out when he caught me typing in straight dope. I must’ve been… What? 14 at the time?

I’m now 23 and was an avid member for years… paid for a year… let it lapse… then joined again just a few days ago.

Haha… what an odd post to make number 4,000…

Though if you count the SDMB winter of discontent I think I’d gone though some sort of posting binge and shoud’ve had another K in there… meh.

oh… and I was a charter member at one point… don’t know if you let it lapse if its ever possible to get that back.

I was just reading when I saw that Canadiangirl wasn’t getting answers to her question in this thread. So I registered, answered, and promptly killed the thread. Not an auspicious beginning, if I do say so myself.

I was living in Jacksonville, FL, and I’d seen the column in *Folio Weekly *- the arts and entertainment free paper. In one issue, I saw the web address to the column, which led me to the boards. Being my first exposure to a message board, I lurked about 20 minutes… then joined to post in a thread called Thread. Once I figured out how it all worked, I was hooked. Dang - it’s been over 8 years!

I stumbled onto the boards quite by accident while browsing the main Straight Dope site (which I’d been reading on and off for years as a safe place to kill a few minutes at work during downtime).

I stayed because it’s awfully rare to find a place where posters don’t mistake “lol” for punctuation, have something intelligent to say (most of the time), and are as kitty-obsessed as I am. :slight_smile:

I joined for the pie.

I originally joined on AOL in 1997.

Anyway, the reason I joined was because I had read a few of Cecil’s books, which I had checked out of my local library. I was happy to see that the Dope was on AOL and began going through the archives there.

Eventually, I found myself over at the boards. It wasn’t until it moved to the Web that I began to post more regularly.

It’s just a great community of intelligent people, something that is rather difficult to find in the world.

And, it’s hilarious.

I read all the Cecil books and loved them. I don’t live in the city, so I can’t get the Chicago Reader. I was online for email and amazon long before I found the Dope online. I signed up and posted once (I think) and then forgot about it.

A few years later, I was bored and found it in my bookmarks (This was quite awhile ago. I was a new member of a small nursing oriented board; I never saw this board when it was on aol, even though I was on aol at the time as well) and linked to it. I found a thread all about “should this HS girl be allowed to wear this confederate dress to her prom?” and jumped right in.
I didn’t even think of Board etiquette–I didn’t bother to introduce myself in a separate thread or even read several threads and discover the “culture” here. From that first thread, I felt like I was with people I’d grown up, namely my siblings and my brother’s friends in HS. All smart, all arguing and dissing one another, but mostly in a fun way.
In that same thread, my user name was used by a troll/ sock type person), who posted some racist crap. I have never known how that happened–but it was the mods here that discovered it, after they’d warned me and I had written back saying no way would I have said those things. The sock had put 2 r’s in their version of my user name and that is what made my case. (I forget what that is called when someone hijacks your user name–I haven’t seen it happen in a long time). The mod (don’t remember who it was) apologized to me and I never looked back.

I learned a lot in that first crazy thread. It was the best thing for me–I learned that you can’t trust other people on the Dope until you know them a bit better. I learned that one must make an argument precisely and cogently in order to be heard, respected and accepted. And I learned that there is a lot of room for all different types of people. And that I’m a whole lot more liberal in some ways than I ever thought I was, and that I’m a more conservative in others as well. I use those words in their widest sense. I also learned to grow a thicker skin.

I stay (and I almost left this fall) for a number of reasons, most of them distinctly un-profound. It’s like my home online, a place I can go and there is always something interesting happening and where I know my sense of humor will not be (usually) misconstrued and my vocabulary/method of expression accepted.

I must be feeling introspective today-and longwinded. :slight_smile: