The first time I found it was because I was following Violet Blue at the time, and was curious about the drama. I came back a few years later after seeing the mentions in xkcd that @chenille posted.
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Probably around 2008 when a friend was posting links to BoingBoing articles on Facebook. I was reading the articles for a few years before I bothered to look at the comment section. Generally comment sections were hellscapes so Iâd avoid like the plague, but this one was different. I made an account in 2013 so I could post a comment related to silage-cutting practices and how it affected corncrakes.
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Youâre a good man. Or wolf; as the phase of the moon allows.
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For those not aware, the wolf signal from TOP is still available. At present, posting it does not automatically summon @orenwolf, but that feature should be rolled out in Version 2.0.
(Not for frivolous use, it should go without saying)
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Whatâs the signal that summons Rob?
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MOIST
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A safe with a Dank Carpetâ˘
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A science fiction buddy told me about bb back in the early 2010s. I enjoyed the bbs a lot but got fed up with some of the assholes over there, and switched to Elsewhere in 2017. Havenât looked back.
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Canât remember when I first visited nor joined the weird community at TOP, but Iâd read The Happy Mutantsâ Handbook in the mid-90s. A link at a news aggregator probably done it - since getting online in Oct 98 (I can remember that), I busily looked for better places to get news than what was on cable and local tv.
I was surprised and pleased AF to be invited to join Elsewhere when The Great Walk Out happened.
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I too have no memory of when I first read BoingBoing but I was immediately impressed by the weird and cool content and the weirder and cooler comments. 
I lurked for years before finally signing up in 2017. Up until then anything I had to say would have already been covered by other posters but I thought of a reply/joke that hadnât yet been made. I waited patiently, sure that somebody else would make it shortly, but it didnât happen. So I finally signed up to make my first contribution.
It wasnât very good I guess as it only received 2 likes, lol. But I continued to make small contributions since I had gone to the trouble of signing up. It was also nice to be able to give likes and show my appreciation for posts.
I was very happy to receive an invitation to Elsewhere and find so many of the posters I liked had migrated here after the SuS disaster. BoingBoing is no longer what it was but its original spirit lives on here, thankfully.
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Me too â back in 2017!!
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Itâs only three days until my 2nd Caek Day.
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Honestly I donât remember when I first joined or why. It was a really long time ago. I must have followed a link from another blog? Iâm trying hard to remember but it had to be the aughts. I recall enjoying that it wasnât blocked at my place of work, like someone mentioned. But that was later. I feel like the community is what took me by surprise. Now that I think about it I may have run across BB because of a course in computer mediated communication in college where I studied online spiritual communities (not that BB was one but I think somehow there was a mention or connection somewhere when working on that project). As I grew out of my millennial naĂŻvetĂŠ it seemed like this die-hard bastion that was trying so hard to keep the magic alive.
I stayed along multiple changes and platforms and I guess technically Iâm still there. I check in from time to time. I dunno. But nothing is the same anymore including me and thatâs fine really, or at least it is what it is. Iâm glad this place is around.
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I found BB somewhere around 2003 or 2004. A webcomic artist I followed had done something clever with music & art & a travel log and his site was absolutely wrecked by the BB traffic spike. I recall there was an ad for one of the Grand Theft Auto games that used a short sample of âIn the Air Tonightâ that looped almost perfectly.
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I didnât know that IVAR supported Linux! Iâll have to try installing that on the catio I made out of IVAR.
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Oh! That reminds me of one of my favorite bb experiences. Remember when they posted a story about Omegle? Or was it chat roulette!? I just remember I jumped on for the first time and it was so much fun..like I chatted with a bunch of different nerdy Europeans mostly. It was one of my favorite internet days. I logged in like a week later and it was all literal dicks. The cool kids had all been other boingers trying it for the first time too 
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I have no idea when I first started 1) reading and then 2) commenting on BB, but I do remember that I found out about PostSecret from BBâŚjust looked it up, and it was a David Pescovitz post in April of 2005. PostSecret had started in January of that year. So I was already active by then, at least.
Still read the PS posting every Sunday. That was the draw of BB, where you could find out about an obscure but interesting âwonderful thingâ somewhere on the internet you might not have found on your own.
boing boing. net/
2005/04/29/postcard-confessiona.html
ETA: Iâve tried everything I can think of to break apart that URL so itâs not clickable/traceable back to here, but itâs not work. Help?
Oh, wait, somehow it finally worked!
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