My wife regards this board as “The Other Woman” that steals time and attention away from her. 
She participates in several message boards, but this one she feels is “mine.” She lurks, and is a Charter Member, but rarely posts. Although she likes Dopefests and most Dopers she has met IRL. (Notably Qadgop and Rick and DMark)(and MadPansy64 and GiantFreakingMarine and Yeticus Rex and…you get the idea.)
Just not her thing, and she’s very busy otherwise. I’ve sent her links and showed her threads that might interest her now and then, though. I’ve even started a few threads re: questions or observations we both had (the most recent was about Darcy’s Anglican patronage influence in Pride and Prejudice; she’s a big Jane Austen fan).
My wife, the Incomparable Sunflower, has little or no interest in the internet. She mainly uses our computers just to check email.
She often refers to all of you as my “imaginary friends”
This is “my thing,” not his. I send him links from time to time, but he isn’t really into message boards unless they’re related to one of his video games. So, for him, message boards are about entertainment, but they aren’t really entertainment themselves.
I’ve brought it up, and Mr. Neville just isn’t interested. I’m not going to pressure him into it.
He lurks, but he thinks you guys (and me) are incredibly nerdy. He finds the trait endearing in me, but not so much in strangers! Plus it’s not his thing, although he is slowly posting at other messageboards, but mainly very specific ones like furnace repair.
He has terrible spelling and grammar.
He’s really just not that interested in message boards, although the spelling/grammar part is true. He’s got blogs and online gaming and stuff, but he doesn’t do message boards much.
She says any message board that would give me even the slightest amount of responsibility “must be a bunch of retards.”
He uses message boards mostly for software development advice and rarely for entertainment. He loves some of the threads I read him, though, and has threatened to lurk but promptly forgets about it again until I read him a particularly hysterical thread.
We were both fans of the Straight Dope books, so I was surprised that he wasn’t that interested when I first came across the SDMB. I think he didn’t quite get what a Straight Dope board would be like … he’s active in a few other internet communities, but they’re more clearly defined in terms of their subject matter. He even said something like “well, once you all say ‘Hey I think the Straight Dope column is cool,’ what else is there to talk about?”
I will often mention threads that were especially interesting/funny, and at some point he thought maybe he would give it another look … but by then, it was already established that it was “my thing” in our house. He has plenty of other things to entertain himself with, internet and otherwise.
He has other places on the net where he spends his time. I’ve shown him the dope and he knows my name here so he can freely see anything I’m saying online but he would rather spend his time online playing virtual scrabble.
My SO doesn’t read any English unless he has to.
He prefers face time over posting on a message board.
He posts rarely, lurks occasionally, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting several Dopers IRL at VegasDope 07. Dmark, LVGeogeek, Kurilla, Glee, Rick, Rico, Mrs. Rico, Silenus, Mrs. Silenus, ScubaBen, Cyn, Rigamarole and all the other attendees. He said it was great to meet people with a variety of interests and more than two functioning brain cells.
She’s quite busy with her studies, and she thinks the SDMB is “geeky”. Her online time tends is mostly spent on sites and mailing lists associated with her career path, and health/wellness/yoga/organic lifestyle sites. She enjoyed accompanying me to the last Cleveland Dopefest, though.
Giraffe, your wife cracks me up. Of course, it’s probably not surprising that she’d have to have a good sense of humor…
He works a lot and probably doesn’t even know it exists. I don’t plan to enlighten him. He already reads my blog so I like having this as a place to stop by once in a while. Besides, he’s kind of non-participatory where internet stuff is concerned.
He’s just not that interested. And he thinks it’s mostly people who have too much time on their hands, who talk about weird stuff that probably doesn’t need to be talked about.
Ironically, my wife spends more time here than I do, but she’s a card-carrying lurker and absolutely refuses to post. She seems concerned about getting people riled up at her–any time anyone starts a thread, someone will always come in and take a dump in it. Sometimes it’s on the OP, sometimes it’s on someone posting to the thread. That (being the dumpee) is what she wants to avoid.
I could go on, but… well, she’s going to read this…
I’ve tried, especially with the free posting, to change her mind, but it’s hopeless.
The official reason is that she found the usual suspects in Great Debates intellectually and wants a time out to learn more.
I suspect the actual reason is that she has her own message board where, I’m sure, she sometimes talks about me, and she doesn’t want to share that, and feared that if she kept posting here, she couldn’t justifiably complain about me lurking. I want her to have her own space, so I’m okay with it.
He prefers to leave anything to do with computers or the internet to me.