When did you join Fluther, and what does it mean to you?

I joined when AnswerBag modified its site. “Joined: December 11th, 2009 ” Now I use both sites.

Some time in 2008. It serves as a great place to obtain knowledge. It also helped me mature and form morals.

A long, time ago, in a galax…
It means as much to me as a soft boiled egg with toasted soldiers to dip in the runny yolk.

I joined Fluther in august of 2013. I came here because Amazon had just pulled the plug on Askville.i was very active in the politics and law section at Amazon’s Askville.Fluther is a good site and I like to visit it from time to time.

I’ve been here since 2008. I’m very interested in people. I want to know what it’s like to be you, and I want you to know what it’s like to be me (if you’re interested). Here, people open windows into their experiences, their worlds, what’s important to them, what they wonder about, what they worry about, their hurts and aspirations. This place gives people enough anonymity that they feel somewhat safe in doing this, in a way that they might not “IRL”. It’s a fascinating and therapeutic thing to see that there are many different ways to live a life.

I joined in April of 2008. I remember the early “glory” days of the site when it was a scintillating place of exchanges between a lot of very sharp minds. I still stick with it because of the friends I’ve made (and lost through the years), and for the reasons @thorninmud said.

I joined in July of 2007.

My first Q&A site was Yahoo Answers Beta – once it went public, it tanked rapidly, and I rarely went there for several months. Then I discovered Fluther when the first iPhone came out and there were sites that listed webapps for the smartphone. I loved the concept: that questions would be categorized by topics and matched to those who list those topics as their area of ‘expertise’. This site went through a lot of changes while trying to get those systems working as intended, and trying to stay true to the Q&A format and not get bogged down by chatter and similar garbage that made Y!A so bad.

My participation has varied over the 7.5 years, and I am sad that it never lived up to its potential; but I do enjoy having a place where I can come and discuss a wide variety of topics and read some different perspectives on issues than I might find on social network sites.

I joined when AnswerBag changed their site to look more like a setting for smartphones. Since then the audience changed up, and most answers now are badly written one liners peppered with bad spelling. The in depth discussions are pretty much lost in a sea of blurbs and shit that looks like it belongs on Twitter.
To be fair, very decent discussion still exists, but you have to dig deep to find it, and for me it just isn’t worth it.

Fluther on the other hand, provides countless subjects to talk about with intelligent people. It replaces AB perfectly in this respect, and then some. What it means for me is a place to chill, have fun in and it’s part of my daily online routine. It’s not much more than that, but I’m more than happy about it.

For the most part, you aaah ‘ite, Fluddah.

I came to Fluther in August of 2007. The cats had fleas and I was looking for help. I was googling all kinds of information on fleas (flea life cycle, flea treatments, etc.) and on around the third page I was brought to Fluther. There were few people here at the time, and few questions per day.

I am friends with a bunch of Jellies, either here or on FB. Even though we’ve never met, I still consider them friends. Someone said recently that a friend is someone you call up and go to have dinner and a movie with, I disagree. I think some people here are friends I will have till the day I die.

I enjoy Fluther for the various questions that are posted, and it’s also a good time killer. There are not many sites that are part of my online routine, and Fluther is one of the few that I check in with often.

Heh. @talljasperman and @Symbeline you both joined on the same day. December 11th must’ve been the day Answerbag changed.

@dxs good sluthing

@talljasperman I’m a sluther on Fluther. Look at that.

Dec 11, 2008. I remember the AB migration well because it was my one year flutherversary.

I’ve made friends and I can usually count on Fluther for support. Many of you have helped me during some of the hardest times of my life. It’s hard to turn your back on that. (yeah, I know. I probably hold the record for the most times a jelly has deleted their account. It’s either me or cruiser) :)

August 2008, it’s a place where poor grammar and punctuation are not tolerated; but almost anything goes as far as topics. Non-English speakers get a chance to converse with English speaking people. Questions and answers are sometimes silly and sometimes serious.

I originally joined back in spring of 2009 when I was 17. Probably April. Then I cancelled that account and created a new one in June. Then I used that one until fall 2014, when lack of activity on the site and my new hectic lifestyle caused me to cancel that account. So this is my third. I just couldn’t keep away.

I joined in August of 2008. I have met many people that mean a lot to me. I miss a lot that have left.

August 11, 2013. I came here originally just for information (although I did answer some playful questions and my first answers sounded like someone who couldn’t write properly). Then I began to develop intimate feeling for this site and stayed. There was up-and-down, lots of embarrassing moments, but now I’m still here.

@DominicY and to think just four years earlier you and I would battle it out in wis.dm; you called me an ageist b.c. I did not think it was a place for young teens. Boy, was I right. The wis died and we came here in the great wis.dm move, or crash… Fortunately Ben And Andrew, I refuse to connect thier names as some do, they do not like it and I know this based on their comments, made the landing easier for most wis.dumbers. Myself included.

Now, for the question; i came first when it began, left, came back in march of 09 to stay, or was it may? Whenevr wisdm came with MatteBrowne et al. Oh how I miss certain jellies.

In any event, good question, for the umpteenth time, but it did elicit a response from this old unwise and cranky jelly.

If there are typos or grammatical errors, I blame my ipad and poor eyesight.

Sorry this post was so long, I didnt have time to post a short one.

I think I joined two years ago, pretty much exactly.

I like the fact that Fluther keeps showing me new things, be that an idea I never thought about or simply different perspectives on daily events. I’ve made some friends here, and I like that I know most people – I know whom to trust on what, which is special on the internet.

I came to the lagoon in May of 2008 to ask a question about pants for big guys, such as myself. The jellies were so helpful and funny. I stayed and, later that year, my father died. I posted a question about it and the kindest, most helpful people responded and offered advice and support. Complete strangers these “jellies”, but suddenly people I could rely on.

Specific jellies come and go, and I miss many of them, but “the collective” has never failed to entertain, enlighten, and encourage me.

Whatever the future brings, I will always be grateful for Fluther.

I came here in 2009 after being adrift for awhile following the closure of AiROW.com.

I have had an active online life since I was pretty young; having strangers whose opinions of me mean very little to talk with frankly has been a fun and healthy part of my life. When I was between sites for awhile it felt like something was missing.

Incidentally in 2009 I was having horrific health problems, and Fluther ended up kind of becoming a place where I vented about that. It remained so through 2011 until I became healthy. That has been really valuable to me.

Now I’m pretty busy a lot of the time, but I still care about lots of the people here.

@cookieman I guess Sponge Bob’s square pants wouldn’t work for a cookie like you?

@zenzen Fortunately Ben And Andrew, I refuse to connect thier names as some do

Heh, I knew I wasn’t the only one who gets annoyed by the famous “bandrew”.

Bandrew is even worse.

Yeah. Why the hell does Andrew get his whole name but Ben just gets one letter lol.

Well, I always saw it written as Bendrew, actually.

When wis.dm imploded. What does it “mean” to me? Not much. If Fluther went away I’d move on. I don’t spend a lot of time here anymore. I quit for a few months and then rejoined under a different avatar name.

@janbb Well, I’ve seen it both ways, actually.

I joined Fluther because I was curious about something.

I stayed because the people here are so different from me and so funny.

@Symbeline ben plus andrew equals bendrew. Ben gets the whole name while andrew gets the latter half, which is why tis andrew who disliked it, plus the fact that ben’s name came first, another downer.

I have the screenshots to prove it, lol. Jk. Only fluther and google and fb recall and store Everything!

@zenzen And the NSA.

lol zendrew

@Symbeline i dont know if you are kidding or have misplaced your spectacles.

No tilde.

Ok a little one.

@janbb is that another jelly?

Oh, oh you mean THE NSA.

I misplaced my testicles.

I joined in Sept of 2009, as Val123. I had 12K, which I lost when I changed my name. With @osoraro when wis.dm died.

Well, I’m glad I found it. Made lots of friends. Also like Wis.dm it has changed the way I look at many things.
It doesn’t mean what Wis.dm meant to me tho. Not sure why, but most wis.dmrs really took the closing of the site hard. I would be sad if Fluther died, but I wouldn’t literally cry like I did when Wis.dm died.

August 15th, 2007, and less than it used to.

I joined the summer the first iPhone was released. At the time, Fluther was featured on the Apple site as one of the first web apps.

It started as a fun place to debate and be social. At some point, one of the cool and decent regulars turned me on to 9/11 truth. From there it was a total freefall into every conspiracy theory one can dream up, and my obsession with that played out here for a number of years, actually.

I had an algebra teacher who used to tell us that “we fell into a bucket of dirty water and came out smelling like a rose.” He would say this anytime we did the math wrong but managed to get an answer correct. That’s kind of what happened to me. I turned over (and over and over) all kinds of awful shit happening in the world and ended up finding a doorway to an enlightened state of being. I’m more at peace now than I’ve been in 20 years or more.

So this has been a good place to burn off a truckload of karma. I see people sometimes going through a similar process on Facebook, for example, and that can take its toll on relationships. In a way, I feel lucky I could do that here among friendly (albeit antagonistic at times) acquaintances.

Having found some answers for myself and having supplanted intellectual curiosity with a kind of wisdom, I’m less interested anymore in participating, although I still do out of habit.