She found the site and started sending me links to threads all the time and I eventually joined up and started posting myself. Then when they started charging, I dropped out. A couple years later, now that I can post for free again, I’m back (What can I say? I’m a cheapskate!).
Anyway, this was the first message board I ever participated on and it has quite thoroughly spoiled me for other boards on the 'Net 'cuz they all seem to be full of stupid people. I hate stupid people. A lot. I mean, they’re so… stupid! It’s nice to nose through here and see complete sentences and coherent thoughts and such.
A friend from another forum told me about this a year ago but I was busy with other forums so I didn’t check it out. After watching a drama explosion on one forum get dragged and beaten to death across 5 other existing and spinoff forums I finally figured out that as a group they loved it and it was never going to stop. When you add in a group of admins and mods who can’t get it together on the rules and are scared to enforce them against the rules lawyers and trolls anyway it starts to resemble a Monty Python skit. I got disgusted, turned over the keys, left and never looked back. I took a break for a few months and then I remembered this place and lurked for a while. It seemed like a good balance of both fun and serious forums and reading the rules was like therapy for burned-out mods. When I saw ‘we can ban you for any reason or no reason at all’ I laughed like hell and registered.
I was on Yahoo and searched for “entertainment,” I think it was, and it brought up The Straight Dope. I looked at it, went “meh,” and went off looking for something else. A couple of months later I did the same thing, and this time I went to the site and looked around a little more, started reading threads and columns, and the rest, as they say, is history.
That’s the funny thing for me. It’s crazy to think I’ve been interacting with some folks here for that long. I’m 28 now, and joined when I was 20. That’s a lot of history!
I was working third shift, and bored, bored, bored. I was on the snopes MB, and someone linked to here. I’ve been here ever since. If it hadn’t been for the Dope, I don’t know if I’d have survived third shift.
It was the hookers and blow. Y’see, JollyGoon, years ago, new members got hookers and blow when they signed up, and since I…
Naw, seriously, in my case, it was because I could see that this was a message board unlike most others. Threads stayed on topic, flamefests were confined to the Pit, and most of the posters seemed like pretty decent and intelligent folk. Besides, topics went from deadly serious to gut-bustingly funny, and I had to participate.
Like many others, I lurked for a long while (I was certainly reading the SDMB Internet board in 1999 after a friend at work told me and at least one other current Doper about it), and eventually signed up. Now, it’s a part of my life; I’ve learned a lot from it, shared my knowledge where I could, and had a great time here.
I’m still waiting for those hookers and the blow, by the way.
I found this message board from another message board comment. The other message board was extremely contentious and trainwrecks were a daily event. A poster commented that message board was nothing compared to this one. He felt that this message board was the most contentious, nasty, ill-mannered message board. Well, I had to see such a thing, just to see what I was trying to avoid.
I got here and took a look around and didn’t see anything like what he was describing. I PMed him and asked if he was talking about the same message board I was seeing. He noted that it might have changed since it went pay-to-post. Based on that, I thought it was a decent place since people paid to post, so I joined.
And now that I’m here, they’ve made it free to post.
During the Winter of Lost Content™, a lot of the members here went to other boards to hang out while things got fixed. I’d been posting some over at snopes when wring explained why all of a sudden there seemed to be a huge influx of uknown people. At the time, I knew Guin called this place home, but I was enamored of our newest liberal member. They both named the Dope as the place to be (when it was up and running), so as soon as I could, I joined up.
I didn’t say much in the beginning because this thing seemed vast and all the folks friends, plus everyone was infinitely smarter than me. Then I slowly tip-toed into threads and would leave a brief comment and run back out. Finally, I spent pretty much all my time here and eventually even gave up most everywhere else. And haven’t looked back. I consider it my internet home too.
I was hooked from the first reading of the first Cecil book that hub bought me for Christmas one year on a whim. It mentioned the aol board which had just closed so I’ve been around since the web board. I had never been to a message board before so I lurked for quite some time before actually joining. I love the wit, sarcasm, and general intelligence of this board over anything else I’ve seen on the net.
I followed a link from DVDTalk. It linked to a hilarious Lord of the Rings thread in Cafe Society. I was hooked and registered immediately. I didnt even think twice when they demanded an annual fee. I visit SDMB everyday but I lurk most of the time which is why after 5 years my post count is still under 500.
I am also, to my knowledge, the Dope’s only registered member from Malaysia. Yay me!
I only joined, after lurking for a while, because someone started a thread about giving up smoking and I had quit using a method that not only was effortless, it was kind of fun. The book was written by an English woman and I figured it would not be well known to an American, so…
