How did you guys come across Fluther?

I came to ask why do I see my veins. I stayed because RedDeerGuy asked about phonetics, so I answered, and then I went to see other questions, and one question led to another…...

I used to belong to another Q&A site called Answerbag that I was very fond of. One morning I woke up to find it had become unrecognizable overnight. Honestly, overnight. They completely changed the look of the site and the way it was run. The new site had nothing similar to what I had enjoyed before.

Someone told me about this site, and I decided to give it a try. There are still some of us here.

(Answerbag went completely down the tubes and shut down for some time. It was recently revived, but it’s a shell of what it used to be.)

I was on a website called AiROW (stands for “am I right or wrong?” – people would post an opinion and others would vote on / debate about whether they were right or wrong). At some point the owner got bored of running it and it shut down. One of the other members found me some time later to tell me that a bunch of them had come here instead.

Recovering from jet lag after a return flight from Asia in 2010. I have no idea how I came across Fluther in my web browsing but, obviously, it’s been a longterm relationship that is still going strong. 7 years on March 10. Man, and I’m a commitment phobe. lol

I found a link from Answer bag.

Masturbating over Fluther?
All kinds of unpleasantness wrapped up in a giant parcel of ewwwww

I was just getting started on Askville and it went down suddenly. A friend I made there suggested I come here.

My dog had just died and I was thinking about getting another one. I was googling dog names and found Fluther. I’ve been here every since August 2008.

I first appeared here sometime during 2009 or 2010. An internet search, for some long-forgotten topic, landed me here. I liked what I saw, so I set up an account. Except for a couple of hiatuses, I’ve been around ever since.

My continuous goal – not to be mean, at least not deliberately, to anyone here.

http://metatalk.metafilter.com/14511/Another-ask-site

One of my friends told me she has used it for years… but now she can’t sign in. I saw some of her answers here, so I know she was on it. I wonder why she can no longer sign in.

I came along with the great Answer Bag migration of 2009 where a few hundred of us baggers descended upon the Tide Pool. Thus commenced the Great you are not welcome here push back from the Jellies that felt they owned the place. Very few stayed most eventually left. I am only staying because John Powell and Tropical Willy will have told me how much they appreciate my presence.

I believe it was after AB shut down, thought it was a nice place to land….well….guess that is what I get for thinking sometimes…...bygones.

I was looking for an alternative for a shithole called Y!A. A site suggested this site so I came. I stayed to ask silly questions and for some reason I just couldn’t escape. Maybe I just dived too deep. And now here I am.

@Hypocrisy_Central AB did not shut down per se they just imploded and changed things just for shits and giggles and we/I said this is fucked up and left. They ultimately died a slow death…IMO Fluther is not too far behind the point where AB was when they rolled the bus.

^ Did anyone tell you that you favored Trump a lot by your avatar? I would be careful, seems many people have a venomous hate for the man, and they might try to shank you by mistake. ~~~

@Hypocrisy_Central You advice although is sage…it sorely late for the early show. I have another Trump avatar I am summoning every bit of restraint I would otherwise use in a heart-beat. I appreciate the allegiance to ones party but when it rains shit for the sake of raining shit and because someone is buthurt over the results of an election, time to get pull on the adult panties and move forward. Their (the Dems) inactions and complacency gave us Trump. Deal with it. Eight years goes by relatively quickly. I have tons of advice on how to get through it with your sanity intact.

Trivia question for AB emigrants: who was the first refugee from Canswerbag to join Fluther?

I am glad you joined us here as well @SergeantQueen. I came across the site trying to find answers to a question I had. It has been too many years for me to remember what the question was but I stuck around because, overall, the folks here are pretty nice. There is the occasional backbiting but more like siblings than trolls.

I came across it completely by chance many years ago. I asked a question and got a sensible answer so I stayed.

http://www.fluther.com/1616/i-remember-a-softcore-porn-show-from-the-early-90s/

That was my first question. I came from ask.mefi which only allows a question a week so I didn’t to waste that on soft-core porn. Fluther delivered!

Mid-2007 I had a newborn baby and fleas in the house from the cats. I was googling and learning all about fleas’ life cycle, how to kill them, etc. In my googling, I came upon Fluther.

Now the newborn is almost ten years old and I’m still here.

A lot of us Jellies are also friends on FB and there’s a secret group for Jellies there as well.

I like that Fluther is an intimate group but I’d also like it if it had more going on. Contradictory thoughts, I know…..

I was looking for ways to stop telephone spam and a Fluther question about it came up in my search engine, Yahoo.
i liked the feel of it and the respectful answers so I kept reading.

I finally asked a question in 2009, about prostate cancer surgery, and the sincere answers hooked me.

I was one of the refugees from Answerbag when that place was ‘destroyed’ in the past. I didn’t even know Fluther at that time but a read a thread about complain and people were suggesting that one of the better alternatives for Q&A site lover is Fluther, among other things. I simply gave it try.

I don’t know whether it’s just me or what but I feel Fluther in the past (before they separated general and social sections) was a lot more lively and full of regular participants. As for the current situation in Fluther I feel the participation here has become seasonal.

@Unofficial_Member Yeah, there was a big falling out over religion about two years ago and another exodus about a year ago over politics. There is a small core but at least from my perspective we get fewer questions from new people than we used to. Maybe Google has cut into our niche by providing all the answers to all the questions.

@rojo I believe Google still act the same way like it has always been. The same problem is that Fluther has never been on the first page of search result for most of the question asked by people. Yahoo answer, Quora, Reddit, etc seem to always get the priority, and I bet most people are not motivated to turn to the next page when they can get all the answer from the first page.

By the way, I feel years ago we tend to get more controversial questions (and good ones too to spark heated debates) which make this place more entertaining and intellectually/emotionally rewarding.

I was on a cooking website. One day, there was a notation at the top asking if we would like to answer some cooking/food questions. I thought I was being directed to another food related site, but I landed here. It was like Dorothy opening the door of her house when she landed in Oz. I’ve been here ever since. In the beginning I only answered food related questions. In the beginning, and for several years, I only answered questions. I never asked them. Then one day I did. I’m trying to remember what the question was.

”...like Dorothy opening the door of her house when she landed in Oz” Love it!

I stumbled upon it almost eight years ago. Subjects were so wide ranging that I kept coming back. I now actuallyam curious as to certain jellies’ posts.

Just went back to see Answerbag, of which I was a part of. Wh…what happened? I know it changed faces, which is why I fucked off, then it closed down…and now it’s all weird and…someone owns this? They’re running it? Why?

Most of us AB vets were right when we said years ago that their overhaul was bullshit.

VUUUUUNESUUUUH!!!!

I came across Fluther accidentally when I was searching the web for I don’t remember what… I just remember Fluther was on page two or three of the search results. Based on the question-format of the link’s title, I expected a more typical forum page—bland layout, strangers commenting at each other across the ether. I wasn’t expecting the quirkiness of Fluther’s layout, or the level of personal interaction between the members. I clicked around a bit, but was hesitant to join some random site. A week later or so I ran into Fluther in my search results again for a different question, and still curious, poked around a little more, found out some more about how the site worked.

After a couple of days later, I realized I was forming questions to ask without ever deliberately deciding to do so—and so I made an account and went for it. The responses I got back were so welcoming and honest that I stuck around.

If I’ve got my timeline correct, I think I happened to find Fluther around the time that AB people were making the trek over, and I think I got asked by a few jellies if I was from AB. I didn’t really know what that site was at the time.

There was a lot of dissatisfaction with the revamping of Answerbag in early December, 2009. Many AB’ers were burned out after the political battles in the run-up to the Obama election in 2008 as well, including myself. I and other liberals had created armies of sockpuppets to counter the armies of NeoCon sockpuppets that had invaded AB and were giving undue prominence to their assinine, racial, inane lies, statements and propaganda.

I was popped for creating my little army of twenty sockpuppets and banned from AB until the year 2034.

After the refit of AB, there were many defectors and a few had mentioned Fluther as a friendlier, more liberal site than what AB had become. After my banning, I made a visit and liked what I saw. I lurked for awhile. My first question concerned Hemingway’s relationship with his mother which got a poor response.

So, I lurked some more and about a month later I asked a question about the Supreme Court decision Citizen’s United v. FEC. It immediately got 12 GQ’s and 95 answers. I enjoyed reading the in-depth discussions and even the polite way the conservatives on this site argued their points. That is something that I definitely wasn’t used to seeing. This was also the thread that I met and established a long relationship with the Bostonian ETpro, whom I miss here dearly.

I was sold and have never looked back.

I’ve never used a different q&a site. I was looking for the answer to an organic chemistry question. I was immediately attacked for clubbing baby seals (which I did not do but people don’t seem to read to comprehend sometimes) . Enough nice people replied so I stuck around.

And I’m glad you did.

Gee, shucks.

@Espiritus_Corvus

“I and other liberals had created armies of sockpuppets to counter the armies of NeoCon sockpuppets….”

Do you remember any of your sockpuppet names and do you know if any of the NeoCons were banned for their sockpuppetry?

I had one sockpuppet and I think I named anonymous somethingorother.

By pulling out at just the right moment.

I just found this question again and I now understand what @ucme and @Blondesjon were joking about. I’m slow as hell.