I only post here because I can do it in my underwear and no one says anything.
No one.
Says anything.
Ever.
Fugazi, ummm… a bunch of us were chatting, and… ummmm… <ThelmaLou thrusts out her hand with a card in it>… well, here’s a gift card to Target. You know, blue is a very nice color. And you can’t go wrong with plain white, ya know? Merry Christmas, dude! 
I post because no one on the board has (yet) said to me, as my wife once did: “Expeliarmus pontificat”.
Inertia, mostly; this was my first forum. I stopped posting in Great Debates or Elections to avoid getting banned which sucked away most of my interest in this forum.
At first I was a bit intimidated, thinking I had hit on some sort of intellectual gathering spot. But once I figured out that the tagline is just a pithy slogan and not a mission statement, I felt comfortable posting. It’s really little different than any other forum or group or bbs that I’ve belonged to.
cause I love you guys!! (((smoochies)))
Seriously? This is interesting. I’ve been on plenty of boards and this one is quite different from any of them-- in the level of discourse, the smarts of the posters, the rigorous moderation, the breadth of topics covered, the intelligent humor. I’d like to know about boards that are like this one. I haven’t found any. Do share.
Lookit this boogie here, who can afford underwear :mad:. I, for one, only post as God made me : ashamedly.
First of all, thank you for this O.P. This may be one of the best posts I’ve seen on the SDMB and I’m a '99er.
A half-dozen wisenheimer answers leap to mind. A few lascivious ones as well.
But if I were to be very honest with myself, it would be this:
I discovered The Straight Dope at the much-beloved and missed Coliseum Books on West 57th Street in NYC. I randomly picked it up in the Humor section.
And stood and read. And laughed REALLY hard in the aisle. Then I bought it and brought it home. And laughed and laughed and laughed.
That level of clever endorphine-drip got to me. Found all of the books. Loved all of them. When I stumbled upon the AOL Board in 1999, I was in.
I post for the reasons a lot of us do. To share smidgens of real-world knowledge in the pursuit of, of course, Fighting Ignorance. To vent. To laugh. To support someone else’s opinions and yeah, to battle someone I vehemently disagree with.
This is the Imperfect Mirror that so many of us still cherish. It reflects everything we put into it. Good, bad, tawdry, noble.
A good place to spend time and filled with some pretty fine humans.
I guess I should have been more clear. The moderation is generally more stringent here than any place I’ve seen, but the discussions, personalities, breadth of topics discussed are all things I’ve found in other places. It by no means is a slight on the SDMB; I enjoy this board and look forward to hearing the thoughts of many of the posters. It just doesn’t stand out in general as an exemplar of any of the other meeting spots I mentioned.
My bold.
I’m serious, too. What are these other boards?
Because IMDB shut down.
I can PM you if you want. I don’t want to go too far into a hijack. The BBSes are long gone, and there are message boards that I used to frequent but no longer exist or have become overrun by ne’er do wells. I belong to one board that has been around since 1999, where the initial purpose of the board was to discuss music, but it has evolved into two sections, a music section and a non-music section. The non section has come to be the more active. There are discussions about politics, tv shows to binge, restaurants, all kinds of things.
There’s also a board that I know many members of the SDMB read. I’ve just recently become acquainted with it, and it seems to be a place where you can talk about pretty much whatever interests you.
There are others. I would say that if you do a little research on Google, you can find a board or three that may interest you.
Once in a great while I want to hear someone’s opinion about something. BOY, do I hear that opinion, when I do get an answer, that is. I’ve been here since the AOL days. Mostly out of habit, but once in a while I get a useful answer to a question.
This.
And while message boards are beyond passé these days, I strongly prefer the way discussion works on a MB as compared to Twitter, blog comments, and the like, let alone Facebook which I’ve tried a couple times and strongly disliked.