Where you be?

February 19, 2012 6:50 PM

Where were you when you joined Metafilter?

Heh. I was at the computer desk in my ex-girlfriend's palace-like apartment. Slowly joining. We were dating then, cohabitating even. Those were the days. The 60s. Where. Were. You?

posted by IvoShandor to MetaFilter-Related at 6:50 PM (195 comments total)

I was at the quasi-reception-desk in a small boutique NY recording studio.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:59 PM on February 19, 2012

When I actually got a login? At work, frantically trying to get in during 5 minutes a day at noon that membership was open.
posted by small_ruminant at 6:59 PM on February 19, 2012

For which sock puppet?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:00 PM on February 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

In my office at work. Here, to be precise.
posted by dg at 7:03 PM on February 19, 2012

I was in the ICU after a horrible case of food poisoning, wishing to God there was some sort of site where people could advise me as to whether or not I should eat clams that were accidentally left on top of the radiator all night.
posted by bondcliff at 7:03 PM on February 19, 2012 [17 favorites]

I was watching the news of a the president being assassinated on the Shuttle Challenger while it was crashing into a Manhattan highrise.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:04 PM on February 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

wherewithall?

if that's a tag, why not
wherethehell
wherever
wheretheactionis
whereamI
whereforeartthou
wherewolf
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:04 PM on February 19, 2012

I wanted to say something interesting, but I'm pretty sure I was sitting at a computer at some apartment. Statistically, I was probably wearing pajama pants while drinking a poorly-made, whiskey-based cocktail.

For the sake of being interesting, let's say that I joined Metafilter from the back of a Roc, and instead of using a computer, I was using a computer made out of Lee Iacocca's skull.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 7:06 PM on February 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

September 11, 2001.

I'd been a lurker before that and it took a while for signups to open up again.

But I've felt like a part of this community (assholes, all of you) since that day.
posted by R. Schlock at 7:07 PM on February 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

i'm pretty sure i was at work - stream, maybe? wait, 2002 - so no. tech support somewhere. i checked to see if signups were open every few months and one day they magically were. i signed up and giggled like 2 year old.
posted by nadawi at 7:07 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

on the internets obvsly
posted by elizardbits at 7:11 PM on February 19, 2012 [4 favorites]

I was most likely in my senior-year undergrad dorm room (or my boyfriend's dorm room, next door), a little more than five years ago, because, probably sick of me reading over his shoulder, he gave me a Metafilter account for Valentine's Day, 2007 (which is why my username is just my name). He purposely bought it after midnight on the 14th for the date. Lest you think this was a sweet and thoughtful gift, the sadistic bastard gave me the account approximately a month before my senior thesis was due. (I kid, it was the best gift ever...for what it's worth, we're still together, so there's that.)
posted by ilana at 7:13 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

I was at my parents' for Christmas, after I had just asked a married man on a date. He wasn't wearing a ring!
posted by runningwithscissors at 7:17 PM on February 19, 2012

Pretty sure I was where I am now, facing west at my desk in my home office.
posted by rhizome at 7:18 PM on February 19, 2012

Back on topic, I was at my home computer in the converted 2nd bedroom trying to ignore the cheezy TV my then-wife was watching in the 1st bedroom by checking out this new thing on the Internet called "Blogs". And when I found this one I could become a participating member of, I had to be the first on my block. Then I waited for three months to actually participate.

As for where I was when I signed up THIS username, I was at a computer at the kitchen table of my father's apartment (where I had to cohabitate for a few months while waiting for my disability claim to go through) trying to ignore the cheezy TV my dad was watching in the living room and thinking that, now that the permanent $5 signups had gone into effect, I should (a) throw matt a fin, and (b) claim this, which was the domain name of my main blog, before somebody else does.

So I have the bad TV viewing habits of my loved ones to thank for my commitment to MetaFilter.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:19 PM on February 19, 2012

Junior year dorm room. That doesn't seem right though, I would have sworn it was sophomore year.
posted by theichibun at 7:20 PM on February 19, 2012

Living in an attic, stealing a wireless signal from the house across the street.
posted by mannequito at 7:20 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Let's see... yup, I had just gotten moved off one big project and on to four tiny ones that wouldn't start generating any real workload for a couple months, so I decided to actually pony up. Typing sounds more like work when the boss walks by than clicking.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:20 PM on February 19, 2012

At this same desk in a crappy apartment in Langley, BC. I tried for almost a year before I finally got in when sign-ups were open at noon. I was so flabbergasted I squeeeeed so loudly I'm sure I deafened the rest of the Lower Mainland.
posted by deborah at 7:20 PM on February 19, 2012

Shhh, it doesn't matter, the important part is that I'm here now.
posted by Nomyte at 7:26 PM on February 19, 2012 [12 favorites]

It was a weekend in December of 2006. I was living at home with my parents. I had just met my girlfriend several weeks earlier (we live together now). The lack of light during the winter months is something I still haven't gotten over. The holiday season always makes me depressed. MetaFilter at the very least was a distraction from all of that, though I like to think that it did (and does) make me happy.
posted by Brian Puccio at 7:30 PM on February 19, 2012

My apartment back in Austin. There was some sort of lottery for new members back then for each day. I was working from home that day for some reason.

Two days later I made my first comment. In a post about Britney Spears canceling shows in Mexico City. Yeah, that sounds like something I'd have a comment about. Too bad not a single link in that post still works.
posted by birdherder at 7:30 PM on February 19, 2012

I was at work the day after Christmas, because my work was the type of place where they wouldn't close down for the holidays, and I wasn't the kind of person to give them the satisfaction of using up my vacation hours for nothing (all my family live in town, so I didn't need to go anywhere). I was pretty much the only person in the office, so of course I was wasting time.
posted by LionIndex at 7:36 PM on February 19, 2012

Location: the sub-tropics. I had just emerged from my 40ft pool - water streaming from my long brown hair and tanned limbs. Ethereal music was drifting through the house and a cool glass filled with G&T and a dash of rosewater syrup was about to touch my naturally plump and glistening lips.

I sat naked except for a thin silk wrap on the deck in the afternoon sun, laptop charged and awaiting my every command. I logged into my usual time-wasting site which had, over the years, changed from a challenging and interesting discussion board into a boring "what did you eat for dinner today" chat fest. One of the members mentioned metafilter in passing and I thought, 'Oh, what's that?'

Since then I've looked up, down, sideways and inside-out but I've never looked back. It's been sweet, almost as sweet as my ruby lips.
posted by Kerasia at 7:40 PM on February 19, 2012 [5 favorites]

Our IP records don't go back to 2000, so I have no idea where exactly I was over twelve years ago. But I can check back on my blog and know that I was in Seattle, that I had just finished Cryptonomicon and it was the day before I listened to my first mp3. In fact I even mentioned joining MetaFilter because it was back in the days before you had to register for everything.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:42 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Far away from my home and my husband, feeling very lonely & wanting to keep myself occupied with something useful (giving advice on AskMeFi!).

I have been ambivalent in my feelings about MeFi through the years, but strangely - a bit shamefully ("it's just a website!" after all) - never indifferent, even when I've gone on break. I can't say I've ever truly felt at home here, but it's been a not-insignificant part of my life for so long that I'm definitely invested in it.
posted by flex at 7:42 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Portland, Oregon
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:42 PM on February 19, 2012

I was working as a lab monitor at my college. In those days, joining was far simpler.
posted by drezdn at 7:44 PM on February 19, 2012

When I joined in '04 I was still living out in the far 'burbs, going to grad school and waiting for the lay-off axe to fall on my job at a giant blue computer company*. Life is way mellower for me these days.

I finally did get "right-sized" from that job in '05 but fortunately that was two weeks after they had paid the last tuition bill for my master's degree, letting me live off severance pay for the next three months while I finished up my thesis project. No one has ever been happier to get fired.
posted by octothorpe at 7:48 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was naked on a beach in Ibiza, in 1988.
posted by clearly at 7:50 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Working at a startup in San Francisco for the first time. I had some quiet time at 4 in the morning. A google search for the meaning of 'your check is in the mail' led me here. I could not sleep for two days, until my check did arrive in the mail. Sometimes ukranian CEOs actually do mean what they say.

This was 3 usernames ago.
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 7:52 PM on February 19, 2012

Fargo, ND in my nerdery.
posted by fake at 7:57 PM on February 19, 2012

I was at my desk in my apartment in Kendall, Florida. I was unemployed at the time. Through someplace called freestuff.com (or something like that) I found memepool. I did a "What's Related" search in Netscape one day and the rest is history.
posted by jonmc at 8:03 PM on February 19, 2012

I was living with my parents, and was in between bad relationships. I did a search online for something a few weeks prior, and found the Green. I finally signed up when I had to know whether a certain short story I had heard about was written by Stephen King. If the people here didn't have the answer, no one would. I didn't get an answer then, and have still not found the short story.

But, I've learned a lot from the people here since, on both the main site and the Green. Best five bucks I ever spent.
posted by reenum at 8:07 PM on February 19, 2012

Through someplace called freestuff.com (or something like that) I found memepool.

Actually through freestuff I got a subscription to Fast Company magazine, which is where I found out about memepool, etc.

Like everything else in my life, it's fucking byzantine.
posted by jonmc at 8:07 PM on February 19, 2012

fake: Fargo, ND in my nerdery.

I had no idea Buffalo Bill kept his man-suit project in a completely separate town.
posted by gman at 8:11 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Joined a few days after Christmas at my parents house in 2006. Started lurking sometime between Sept 11, 2001, and Sept 11, 2002 as I remember going back and reading the thread on the first anniversary.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:15 PM on February 19, 2012

I was at my desk in my new-ish apartment in Allston, MA where after two years of mandated lurking I noticed that signups were, astonishingly, back open and ponied up via PayPal immediately. I bought an account for my sister, too, which she's mostly used for lurking since then.
posted by killdevil at 8:16 PM on February 19, 2012

Best five bucks I ever spent.

Hey! How come I'm paying
$12.99 a month?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:16 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

The way I remember it, I'm in my college dorm room in MA (the single I got junior year, the bliss of not having a roommate), but I just realized that's impossible, because I left that school and come to NYC at the end of 2003, so..... I'm not really sure.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:18 PM on February 19, 2012

I joined the day after I graduated high school.
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 8:20 PM on February 19, 2012

The 60s.

What???
posted by HuronBob at 8:23 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I joined the day after I graduated high school.

I joined the day you graduated high school. I killed three trout and a lamb that day. I remember it well. Knives, blood, fur, what more?
posted by IvoShandor at 8:24 PM on February 19, 2012

HuronBob: "The 60s."

What???

Yeah, dude. Some people were at Woodstock, others were having intellectual conversations on Metafilter.
posted by gman at 8:26 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I still haven't joined.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:26 PM on February 19, 2012

Yeah, dude. Some people were at Woodstock, others were having intellectual conversations on Metafilter.

LSD's a helluva drug.
posted by jonmc at 8:28 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Shit... not only did I miss Woodstock, I missed the early days of MetaFilter as well???!!!!
posted by HuronBob at 8:28 PM on February 19, 2012

At flibbertigibbet's place. Good times.
posted by Phire at 8:36 PM on February 19, 2012

Wait...now that I think of it, I was AT Woodstock when I signed up... it was right after Hendrix... I felt patriotic, it was the thing to do... (you can see me in the crowd, about half way back, with the MacAir (prototype, Steve lent it to me).
posted by HuronBob at 8:38 PM on February 19, 2012

I'd just gotten off work at the Tip O'Neill Library at Boston College; I sat down at the main computer desks right inside the front door, as I had done for the six months before that, and started poking through Metafilter. It was my sad little ritual to try to sign up for an account, get denied, and then go back to lurking; but this time, it worked. I nearly freaked out right there, but had the presence of mind to rush through the process just in case signups closed again or something. As a username, the first think that popped into my mind was a name from the Nietzsche class I had had the previous afternoon.
posted by koeselitz at 8:40 PM on February 19, 2012

At home. So long ago that I had an older computer and a different desk but you get the idea.
posted by Lynsey at 8:41 PM on February 19, 2012

late September 2002? dorm room, senior year in college. Apparently I did something useful that year apart from raising my alcohol tolerance.
posted by xbonesgt at 8:47 PM on February 19, 2012

The South Side of Chicago.
posted by kenko at 8:49 PM on February 19, 2012

St Margaret's Road in Oxford, sitting at the desk in my student accommodations, watching the magpies in the garden behind the house.

I remember this because I went on the site to search for a question about magpies.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:59 PM on February 19, 2012

I was introduced to MetaFilter sometime around 1994. I read it for years, with increasing intensity, until finally a saw a thread where Rainn Wilson was being obliquely accused of harboring internet pornography when in fact his hosting service had been infested with some form of worm. I joined, sitting in this very chair where I type this, and hopefully helped clear Rainn's name.

(Not that there's anything wrong with internet pornography. It's how I spend some of my favorite moments online.)

I feel a small combination of thrill and shame when I look at my participation stats here since I joined. 16th overall in comments on the Blue? 4th overall on the contribution index? I'd say I need to get a life, but apparently my life has a blue background and yellow link text.
posted by hippybear at 9:09 PM on February 19, 2012

Microsoft, Building 9.
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:11 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was psychically guiding jeffamaphone's corporeal body while I lay in an isolation tank in Building 8.
posted by not_on_display at 9:13 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

But I've felt like a part of this community (assholes, all of you) since that day.
posted by R. Schlock at 2:07 PM on February 20 [+] [!]

I see what you did there.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:21 PM on February 19, 2012

I was at home, New Year's Day. I had lurked on the site for a long time and it was a sort of new year's resolution to join. I remember being pleasantly surprised by the options that show up once you become a member.
posted by jayder at 9:26 PM on February 19, 2012

At home enjoying Father's Day with the kids. This membership was their present to me, and I was surprised they knew about my surfing habits. They probably noticed the bright blue hue that was starting to embed itself into my facial pores.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:28 PM on February 19, 2012

I still can't figure out how I ended up here. And I mean that quite seriously. I just know I got here in 2010 and that's it.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 9:29 PM on February 19, 2012

On an island. With a gun.
posted by Smedleyman at 9:31 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Working a desk job at a Central London hospital. I was on a two year work/travel visa and though I'd been in the workforce for six or seven years this was my first job where I had Internet. I don't know how or why I knew about Metafilter (my Internet universe being little beyond hotmail, the onion and pr0n at the time) but I did and my job was pretty low demand so I spent quite a bit of my day trying to get the attentions of the girl sitting next to me by sharing Metafilter link awesomeness. I ended up becoming more interested in Metafilter than the girl (unavailable, turned out she had a SERIOUS boyfriend) and right around that same time Metafilter, which had also always told me it was unavailable said hey you know what and opened up for $5 registrations. I signed up and spent the next two weeks obsessing with how to impress Metafilter. Then one morning I got into the office and one of my colleagues emailed me over a random news of the weird link. Sensing opportunity, I checked that it wasn't on the blue already, and posted that bad boy up. How it didn't get deleted I'll never know. I haven't posted an FPP since. I'd like to, but the shame of the Santa incident still weighs on me.
posted by dismitree at 9:38 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Pink and purple house in Oakland.
posted by eddydamascene at 9:40 PM on February 19, 2012

On an island. With a gun.

So, I'm hunting the most dangerous game. I'm on a Carribean island, heavily forested, and he's got a 90 minute head start. I need strategies for capture and/or kill. Hope me, Mefites? [more inside]

posted by Smedleyman to sports, hobbies & recreation at 4:24 PM - 0 answers +"

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 9:47 PM on February 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

Five months pregnant during a difficult pregnancy; years-long lurker. MeFi had most recently been carrying me through months of bedridden vomiting. It was a Christmas gift from my husband. He calls it the best $5 he ever spent.
posted by moira at 9:48 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

A rented house, two abodes ago. I had decorated my front room with several long folding tables, so my friends could easily set up their computers for LAN parties, so it looked like a low-rent computer classroom.
posted by crunchland at 9:51 PM on February 19, 2012

I was here in Norway. Google street view still shows the BBQ on the balcony (ours is the one with the RIMI sign hanging off it), so it's either not being updated or the current residents have no use for it. Our dear friend and Godmother to our cat still lives in the same complex.

Yes, our cat has godparents, doesn't yours?
posted by arcticseal at 9:51 PM on February 19, 2012

Iowa.

(Not heaven)
posted by dirigibleman at 9:52 PM on February 19, 2012

My profile says I signed up in September 2010. That means I would have still been living waaay too close for comfort to Jerry World (link). I'm still using the same computer, same table, & same chair I would have sat in that night, they're just all in a different apartment now.

And, like others have said above, my $5 joining fee was money well spent.
posted by AMSBoethius at 9:55 PM on February 19, 2012

I only joined 1.5 years ago, sitting at my desk in the study, in inner city Sydney. I lurked for about five years before that.

The last 18 months of interactive snark and random learning of things has saved me from countless hours of boredom, made me a better conversationalist, and, at times, helped me professionally. Indeed my best $5 expenditure.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:03 PM on February 19, 2012

I was here in Norway.

I think a meetup with dg is on the cards.
posted by Wolof at 10:04 PM on February 19, 2012

I was probably sitting in my bedroom in the apartment I was sharing with friends in Worcester, Massachusetts, at the far tail end of my college education, finals either in progress or done with at that point, and moved by some questionable instinct to start getting sort of pedantic in a bit of outragefilter on the blue.

I'd been reading Metafilter for at least a while already at that point but had never signed up; maybe doing so was a subconscious attempt to find one more thing to help distract me from the terrifying looming reality that college was over, adulthood was now unavoidably a go, and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself or my degree.

I kind of wish I could beam my current awareness back going-on-eleven years to that poor son of a bitch while he was signing up, to let him know that it would all work out implausibly well. And to maybe suggest he just use his actual name for his username.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:06 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

And to maybe suggest he just use his actual name for his username.

Ha! If I could, I would give myself the exact opposite advice.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:15 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter was the first thing I bought on the internet. I was a sophomore in college when my boyfriend showed me this awesome question-and-answer site and I browsed askme extensively over the next few weeks. I must have been particularly blind to the header at the top of the page, because after awhile I asked him if askme was part of a larger site -- the URL and slogan "querying the hive mind" certainly seemed to suggest there was more, but he just shrugged and went "I dunno." I was pretty internet illiterate, and I remember deleting the "ask." prefix with some hesitation at one point and being shocked to discover that yes, there really were other parts of this site. Oddly, mefi itself didn't capture my interest but the bickering and fighting in metatalk really grabbed me and I read every single policy discussion even though I didn't actually read the mefi posts they were about. And then mefi passed the 50,000 signups number and there was a metatalk where everyone complained about how terrible things were since the $5 signup floodgates opened and there was a lot of posturing about who had the lower user numbers. And because I can be stupidly literal at times I thought "oh no that's something that matters, if I ever want to be a part of this community I'd better jump in before I miss another milestone even if I never say anything at least I'll have a better user number."

I'd only had my first credit card for about a year and since I got tips at my job I operated mostly with cash, so I was still pretty jittery about using a credit card at all. I remember being vaguely unsettled about sending out financial information over the internet because that was how lives got ruined, like that one time I filled out those "13 CDs for a penny!" mailers when I was 12 without telling anyone and sitting through an unending lecture from my parents when the bill came in the mail. But I'd never been able to contribute money to the forums I'd visited as a teenager because I didn't have a way to pay for it, so I was going to do this and it was going to be a big deal because now I was old enough to do things like this and now I was going to prove it. So I have a fairly vivid memory of sitting in the bedroom of my first apartment, pecking my credit card number into my laptop, half convinced bad things were going to happen but determined to do it anyway because that's what adults did. The thrill and anxiety was too much that I closed my laptop immediately after I finished the signup and I didn't use it again for days.

In a lot of ways I've grown up on mefi. I've stolen nearly all the wisdom I have from askme questions, and most of the random knowledge in my head comes from mefi posts. I mostly sit quietly and observe, but few days go by where I don't at least check in. My five year anniversary is on Tuesday, and I'm really glad I worked up the courage to make this the place I spent my first five bucks on the internet.
posted by lilac girl at 10:26 PM on February 19, 2012 [21 favorites]

I was in bed with the flu. Guess what I was drinking.
posted by HotToddy at 10:27 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ha! If I could, I would give myself the exact opposite advice. --- This sounds like the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster.
posted by crunchland at 10:27 PM on February 19, 2012

It was November 2004, when I think MeFi just re-opened to new accounts. I was visiting friends and former students in Kathmandu. Either I couldn't get a Paypal account confirmed, or I could but it just wouldn't work from Nepal... either way, MzB was incredibly nice enough to sign me up and pay my entry fee.
Thanks again MzB!
posted by blueberry at 11:10 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was right here having sprinklers installed in case any long boaters got on my lawn.
posted by Cranberry at 11:35 PM on February 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

In my room in an old and very solid house in Seattle, where I used to live. I had lurked for a few months. My best friend was dating this guy who was kind of an asshole, and we somehow knew he posted on a site called Metafilter. I would check up on his posting history regularly to read his comments and get more of a sense of what he was like. I ended up feeling constantly affirmed that I was right about him being a douche.

Then I got sucked in myself. That was like 4 years and a handle ago. I still see him post very occasionally, it is weird because at this point I often forget that he was the reason I started reading the site.
posted by cairdeas at 11:54 PM on February 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I had been lurking for quite a while, and wasn't really sure that I wanted to participate. Then I went out of town for a few days, and returned to find that while I was away, someone had made a post totally slamming a movie that I was actually kind of excited to be working on. So, I signed up, but then realized that a crabby comment would probably not be the best way to introduce myself, so I stayed out of that thread after all.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:09 AM on February 20, 2012

Another state, ennui I think.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:44 AM on February 20, 2012

In a few days it'll be my three-year Metaversary. I was at my apartment in Cairo, Egypt, during my expat days.

You know what's awesome about being an expat? We had a maid/nanny/cook! (One person, i mean.) my house was so clean! Partly we wanted to move back to US before we got too used to that.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:05 AM on February 20, 2012

oh wow, didn't realize until bluedaisy's comment that today (well, yesterday now) was my 4-year anniversary!
posted by mannequito at 1:33 AM on February 20, 2012

Sept 11, 2001. I had been lurking for a couple of years at least but that day prompted me to join. I was in an apartment in Singapore watching the horror unfurl on tv and in real time on Mefi. It felt like we were all holding each other's hands through that day, right across the world. That's what a real community should be about.
posted by Jubey at 1:54 AM on February 20, 2012 [2 favorites]

I was in my house in RI, on the couch with my boyfriend. I had been lurking and sending him links to neat things I found on MeFi, so he bought me an account so I could play, too. He is now my husband... COINCIDENCE??

(I was kind of "meh" about it at first because I thought it was a waste of money and that I wouldn't use it, and he was disappointed. But I was wrong and he was right!)
posted by illenion at 2:06 AM on February 20, 2012

I was in the offices of a mobile telco in the town of Karlskrona, Sweden.
posted by misteraitch at 2:13 AM on February 20, 2012

I think I was in New York, but I certainly can't narrow it down more than that.
posted by Decani at 2:27 AM on February 20, 2012

About 200 meters south of where I am right now.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:22 AM on February 20, 2012

In the staff room of Lingua school in downtown Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. After I signed up I was in a strange natural buzz all day. I was sitting where the lady in the striped black and grey sweater is.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:54 AM on February 20, 2012

When I joined MeFi, I was warm in your loving embrace, continually in your thoughts, and forever in your heart.

Then I answered an anonymous AskMe with the timeless advice "DTMFA". And then I got dumped. Turns out I was the MF in question.

So thanks for that, MeFi - thanks a whole fucking bunch.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 4:04 AM on February 20, 2012 [3 favorites]

i was in a raging dust storm
that swirled, and blocked out the sun
i could not see my computer screen
til that ol' dust storm was done
then i saw an old man approaching
he gave me an old Greek coin
then he looked at my screen, and he saw Metafilter
said, "yes, you should join, lad, join!"

the old man walked away slowly
i watched as he faded from view
then i looked back again, at that blue Mefi screen
and i knew what i had to do
i sent the old Greek coin to PayPal
it was worth five dollars, you know
and that, my friends, is how it started for me
yes people, it happened just so
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:11 AM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

dIRECTLY aBOVE tHE cENTRE oF tHE eARTH
posted by Sebmojo at 4:22 AM on February 20, 2012 [2 favorites]

he gave me a Metafilter account for Valentine's Day, 2007 posted by ilana
Just came in to say I joined the exact same day! (living room...yawn).
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 4:28 AM on February 20, 2012

All I remember is I got here from popculturejunkmail.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:35 AM on February 20, 2012

I was at the office in west London, supposed to be working. Same as now.
posted by permafrost at 4:40 AM on February 20, 2012

I was in an armchair in my mother's living room. Someone finally said something that moved me to respond $5 worth.

Granted, it was just over a year and a half ago, but I feel pretty pathetic that I remember that clearly.
posted by hoyland at 4:55 AM on February 20, 2012

I was in my bedroom, reading the 9/11 posts. I'd just returned from a summer in NYC and was numb with shock.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:01 AM on February 20, 2012

Even the fake story* of how I joined is pretty convoluted. So, I originally signed up during one of those five-sign-ups-per-day periods. I was sitting in a computer lab in Hampshire College in September 2002. I had been trying for months to sign up, and finally got in. I had started to read MetaFilter way back when sign-ups were free but had never thought to get an account until sign-ups were close. I was super-excited to finally get an account. I don't remember exactly why, but somehow I thought that I had screwed up the sign-up and didn't finish the process. Zoom forward two years and a bit and I'm in my apartment in central Reykjavík and the five dollar sign-ups have been around for a while. So I sign up under the same username I had used way back in 2002 and reactivated the account I didn't know had lain dormant all that time. That's how I ended up with that suspiciously low user number, considering when I actually started posting.


* The real story is hidden in the secret places of the internet where not even Google can guide you.
posted by Kattullus at 5:10 AM on February 20, 2012

I think I was in lab. I'd been looking in on askme stuff and finally found something that provoked me enough to register. (a question about Northampton, MA)
posted by sciencegeek at 5:45 AM on February 20, 2012

At work, on the very slow day before the July 4th holiday weekend, I read this amazing post on the battle of Gettysburg. Like a few others who read it, I finally decided to pony up the $5 and join. It always made me sad that the member who posted it hit the red button later that day.
posted by gladly at 5:47 AM on February 20, 2012

Third floor, Snapper Records, Fulham, London on a hot day in August 2000.

Man. Those were the days. I could smoke in the office and everything!
posted by Jofus at 5:47 AM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Khobar, Saudi Arabia
posted by ambient2 at 6:57 AM on February 20, 2012

One day I was looking for a used car that I could buy with orange juice coupons and with which I could sell cookies out of my trunk. The rest is history.
posted by desjardins at 7:12 AM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Bored at work. Had just gotten pulled into a new office after a year of working from home and started lurking to pass down time. Quickly decided it would be worth five bucks to join the conversation.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:14 AM on February 20, 2012

In the computer lab of the now-defunct Paul Wasserman Library at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:22 AM on February 20, 2012

I started lurking on MetaFilter while I lived in NYC, but didn't join until I had graduated and moved to Portland. I was sitting at Wired Coffeehouse on W Burnside and 22nd.
posted by Lutoslawski at 7:39 AM on February 20, 2012

Either Portland, OR or prison on a smuggled contraband laptop. The early years of the millennium were really all a big blur.

Come to think of it, I've never done any time in prison, so Oregon it must be.
posted by item at 7:53 AM on February 20, 2012 [3 favorites]

October 21, 2002, Robarts Library, University of Toronto, ground floor.
posted by dazed_one at 8:00 AM on February 20, 2012

At my desk, having just watched a six hour Monty python marathon, wanting to take part in the DFW obit thread.....
posted by The Whelk at 8:06 AM on February 20, 2012

A few days after 9-11, thinking "it would be interesting to see a BBS-style conversation about what's going on". Since more obvious US-based news sources were choked with traffic, I had been scoping out and suggesting alternative English-language news sources for the librarians to direct people to, like RTE or Sydney Morning Herald, whatever was up, accessible and serving info. A few days later, things had settled down a bit, but I was still in 'research mode'.

In an office cube at what was then the Minneapolis Public Library, fourth floor of the old down-at-the-heels 1963-built building, downtown, overlooking Nicollet Mall and the parking lot across the street, with the City Hall clocktower in the distance.
posted by gimonca at 8:18 AM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah like a bunch of others I was in my dorm room. It would have been right after the start of my third year of school, although I don't know if I was technically a 'junior' because they went by credit hours, not by strict semester. Probably I would have been though.

Not a very interesting story. It was just 18 days before 9/11 though. I definitely remember posting/commenting on that online, and reading the metafilter thread on it. I found metafilter through kuro5hin.org, which I had found through slashdot.
posted by delmoi at 8:19 AM on February 20, 2012

On April 20, 2005, in my apartment after years of lurking; what's odd that I didn't comment or favorite for almost 2 years after that.

I remember that I had wanted to join earlier but didn't because my debit card/paypal/however I tried to pay was acting funny. But I have absolutely no recollection of much of 2005 why I was motivated to sign-up that day.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:00 AM on February 20, 2012

I must have been reading MeFi for at least a few months before I signed up. On May 1 of that year, I was walking across campus towards my sophomore year dorm room when I had my mind blown by something I saw in the school newspaper. I did a little digging, and got even more confused. I needed help figuring out what the heck this thing was. Who better to enlist than the smartest people I knew? The rest is history (mathematics, religion...)
posted by carsonb at 9:15 AM on February 20, 2012

I was digging out from Hurricane Ike. As soon as my power was back on, I signed up.
posted by *s at 9:24 AM on February 20, 2012

On a bean bag chair. Naked. Eating Cheetos.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:24 AM on February 20, 2012

I was in my secret hideout under the ice in Antarctica. A damned drill bit came through the ceiling and went down through my floor, wrecking it, and I needed some help to figure out how to repair it.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:32 AM on February 20, 2012 [2 favorites]

city hall, fighting.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:42 AM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here, specifically.
posted by slogger at 10:12 AM on February 20, 2012

In an alternate reality where everybody speaks a strange garbled English and people are weirdly elongated.
posted by joost de vries at 10:17 AM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Holland is kind of trippy.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:18 AM on February 20, 2012

>and it was the day before I listened to my first mp3.

Yarrrrr!
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 10:34 AM on February 20, 2012

I actually had found Metafilter while setting up a private message board for the person whose de-Campe I currently get paid to Aide. After spending a week reading other successful online communities and their rules, I was struck by the fact that this was the only one that a) I enjoyed reading and b) I blatantly stole ideas from (Metatalk is genius, it moves discussions that would happen anyway and gives them their own space where they're not just noise and derailing).
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:17 AM on February 20, 2012

I discovered metafilter when a friend sent me the link to Jingle Rock Bell, and lurked for about nine months before giving in and joining up, from the office chair I'm sitting in at this exact moment.
posted by something something at 12:44 PM on February 20, 2012

Wolof: "I was here in Norway.
I think a meetup with dg is on the cards."

Wait, what?
posted by dg at 1:15 PM on February 20, 2012

Next to my now-ex-husband in a computer lab at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík. To complete the scene: the credit card I used to sign up was hot pink and I was probably eating a Mars Bar and drinking a Coke.

Zoom forward two years and a bit and I'm in my apartment in central Reykjavík and the five dollar sign-ups have been around for a while.

This is lies. It was totally in the computer lab. We both signed up in November and didn't have WiFi in the apartment until January. Ahem.
posted by sonika at 1:57 PM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh, that was my previous username. As to this one. I have no idea. I was at work? Or at home? (Both of which were in Providence, RI) In either case, I was eleven weeks pregnant and kind of "dead at the time." That whole summer is lost in a haze of nausea and exhaustion.
posted by sonika at 2:04 PM on February 20, 2012

I was in a tiny office with a large aquarium. My roommates had recently bought some small crabs to help with the aquarium's ecosystem. They did not tell me this. And they certainly didn't tell me that those little fuckers are escape artists par excellence. Just after monju transferred the dormant account to me (I got in when signups were closed through a backdoor account transfer), but before I typed out my introduction to MeTa (there was a great big thread), a wee crustacean scampered across my keyboard. I think it's fair to say that I have not shrieked often in my life but, reader, I shrieked then. Man, oh man, did I ever shriek.
posted by .kobayashi. at 2:24 PM on February 20, 2012 [2 favorites]

No seriously, it was an otherworldly shrill yell. One of the cats came running, and was so fascinated by what he found, that I was put in the unenviable position of trying to save the mystery crab from him. The other cats hid wherever they could, and one of them never really totally forgave me for that awful yelp.
posted by .kobayashi. at 2:28 PM on February 20, 2012

In my fairly swanky grad school apartment in Westwood. UCLA had just built new grad housing and everything was still shiny that September.

I remember I had only stopped working two jobs/seven days a week that summer and then I spent the summer juggling a full time job and an online class. So when I got to grad school, I had so much free time that I finally signed up for Metafilter after lurking for a year or so.

Library school was super fun and I had tons of time for Metafilter. Now I'm reading this in a city just up the road from Fargo that's in the midst of a lovely snowstorm and as I'm cooking stew in my still kinda swanky--but nowhere near Westwood--apartment.
posted by librarylis at 2:43 PM on February 20, 2012

I was in my room on a late Sunday night.

I was a lurker for a while. Any questions or problems I had, I would do a search and many times my answer or suggestions from others would be on a site with a green background. After getting familiar with the URL of "ask.metafilter.com/*" and the green background site, I decided, "Hey, this site has some good information." That's when I actually joined.
posted by jwmollman at 3:02 PM on February 20, 2012

I was almost certainly wearing a bathrobe. I'm almost always wearing a bathrobe.

Hm.
posted by maxwelton at 3:06 PM on February 20, 2012

I can tell you where I was right before I was here. On Dan's Data. He linked to MetaFilter. The rest is history. For very small values of history.
posted by Splunge at 3:25 PM on February 20, 2012

I was 4 states north of where I am now, considering heading south (hence the username). I joined to ask this question about moving. I'm one of those AskMe participant/MeFi lurker types the oldsters like to complain about.
posted by headnsouth at 4:12 PM on February 20, 2012

I was 15 when I joined 11 years ago. That's absolutely crazy. It feels like a lifetime and 3 or 4 different identity changes ago.
posted by geoff. at 4:18 PM on February 20, 2012

I guess I didn't answer the specific question. I don't know where on the Web, but I found the link to the Kaycee Nicole (99% certain it was TheMorningNews.org), and Metafilter felt like a community of normal people. The interface wasn't confusing and full of multi-threading, the site wasn't teeming with in-jokes and basically the antithesis of Slashdot at the time. That said, it was probably several times more tech heavy than it currently is, as far as posts and user base is concerned.

I remember both having to wait for signups to open back up and also being labeled a new user. Now I'm one of the oldest users in the thread. Yes! Vindication!
posted by geoff. at 4:26 PM on February 20, 2012 [2 favorites]

In the cramped, sweatlodge-like home office of my apartment near Gerrard and Broadview in Toronto. August 2002. I'd heard about Metafilter a couple years earlier when the magazine I worked for (the late great Shift magazine) ran a short profile on mathowie (maybe the first offline piece that'd ever been written about him? anyway I remember hearing he'd been less than enthusiastic about getting his picture taken).

My longtime girlfriend had split in the early months of 2002, so I had more idle surfing time on my hands than was probably healthy. I'd been trying a little too obsessively for weeks to get in through the limited window that opened up for memberships in those days; it closed seemingly within minutes. (This was in the glory days of illustrious 14K, just before the $5 free-for-all.)

I panicked a bit when my click actually went through to the sign-up page. I think I had a postcard of a gompa in Ladakh above my desk; wish I'd at least capitalized it.

By the way, as I type this, I've got a two-year-old on my lap watching in rapt attention as the words dance across the screen - Kid No. 2 with that girlfriend who'd split back in 2002 when I first joined!
posted by gompa at 4:47 PM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was recovering from both the 2004 election and a lingering case of what was either mononucleosis or Tibetan Yak Flu. I figured if I was doomed, I wanted to spend what internet time I had left in good company. Everything else is a blur of tissues, tequila, and gigantic antibiotics.
posted by cmyk at 5:24 PM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

In Fresno in August, and because it was August, probably wishing more fervently than usual that I wasn't living in Fresno in August.
posted by jocelmeow at 6:01 PM on February 20, 2012

I was at work, and joined after about 2-3 years of lurking.
posted by KingEdRa at 6:30 PM on February 20, 2012

I was in Albert Park.

I bet you've no idea where that is.
posted by pompomtom at 6:44 PM on February 20, 2012

I bet you've no idea where that is.

I've been there!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:55 PM on February 20, 2012

My college dorm room.
posted by bookwibble at 7:04 PM on February 20, 2012

I was sitting at the desk behind the card rack - at this now-defunct store, absolutely thrilled that I could answer this question. Since then, I've learned to link properly, and not to tangle with questions about fonts.
posted by peagood at 7:07 PM on February 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was in the apartment where I lived for a couple of years after I got my job.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:15 PM on February 20, 2012

I finally slapped my cash on the barrelhead almost three years ago. I was sitting on the couch across the same room I'm in right now. It would have been this room for sure because at the time it was one of the only ones in the house that was habitable, the rest still being in various stages of drywall, mud, and paint after months of demolition and renovation.

Prior to that I'd been lurking since 2001, when I lived in Los Angeles and worked in a windowless, concrete-walled cell of an office in a hospital basement. I don't remember how I found my way here; probably via Slashdot or maybe even good old Plastic. I think it was prior to the 9/11 thread, but I'm not certain.
posted by usonian at 8:25 PM on February 20, 2012

About five feet, no six, to my right.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:35 PM on February 20, 2012

A dorm room in Craig Hall, Chico, California.
posted by MattMangels at 8:50 PM on February 20, 2012

Raleigh, NC. 2009.
I had lurked for about 2-3 months before signing up. I came across MF while googling relationship advice and a link brought me here. I was seriously like, "wtf is this...??[pause]...hey, this site's pretty cool!" I was hooked. I read Q and A for hours!
posted by foxhat10 at 8:51 PM on February 20, 2012

I was in my 2nd shithole apartment in Worcester, MA either just before or just after I started cohabitating with my partner of almost seven years now...A friend had told me about the site, but I didn't want to pony up $5 and was also living a cash-based life, so I had aped around with Monkeyfilter for about a year before I used a gift card to plunk down the bucks for an account here...
posted by rollbiz at 9:03 PM on February 20, 2012

I was alone with two small children on a dial-up connection
at a make-shift corner desk in my dining room on a webtv/small tv set up.
I was new, but hooked.

The mefi 9/11 thread was the first time I experienced a global real-time public reaction to an event!
For me, that morning was a captivating indication of the internet's strength as a communication tool.
posted by TangerineGurl at 9:21 PM on February 20, 2012

Living in North Pole, Alaska. Stay at home mom, desperately in need of intellectual stimulation that I found (and still find) here.
posted by madred at 10:57 PM on February 20, 2012

Microsoft, Building 50. Lab 3150. Bench 6D. It was the bench next to the Cursed Bench, Bench 6C.
posted by spinifex23 at 11:06 PM on February 20, 2012

Sitting on the 13th foor in the Press Bureau, within New Scotland Yard, London.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 11:07 PM on February 20, 2012

Exactly where I am now. On my bed with my phone.

I think my awareness of mefi came from pompomtom and russm et el, who were living with one of my best mates in the aforementioned Albert Park.
posted by deadwax at 3:16 AM on February 21, 2012

I was some billions of miles away across the galaxy, but fortunately, I came here on the same planet with the rest of you.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:01 AM on February 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was some billions of miles away across the galaxy, but fortunately ...

This lovely planet caught your eye?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:19 AM on February 21, 2012

Stalking jonmc. I immediately hopped a flight back to New Jersey, and logged onto the 'net, safe in the knowledge that I could continue to track his movement via this place I saw him join called 'metafilter.'
posted by rich at 6:04 AM on February 21, 2012

Time flies on the Internet...a little less than three years ago, I was in my third San Francisco apartment, my first one not in the Outer Sunset.

I miss you, SF, but I'll be back soon!
posted by smirkette at 6:12 AM on February 21, 2012

I was at home. I had been unemployed for a month and still wasn't over that, and I had been single for three months and still wasn't over that either.
posted by emelenjr at 6:30 AM on February 21, 2012

I was somewhere between my hat and my shoes.
posted by firstdrop at 7:56 AM on February 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think that I saw MeFi mentioned in New Yorker, so checked it out. I joined, but for some reason there was a glitch in the signups, so I re-joined the next day, which just happened to be Sept. 11, 2001.

I have not been what you would call a power user, for all my tenure here.
posted by Danf at 8:03 AM on February 21, 2012

98 Van Cortlandt Park South. 12th floor.
posted by 23skidoo at 8:05 AM on February 21, 2012

I was at work, in Eugene, Oregon. Pretty much the same desk I am typing from right now.
posted by Danf at 8:06 AM on February 21, 2012

I miss you, SF, but I'll be back soon!

I've been saying that since 1978 :-(
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:29 AM on February 21, 2012

I joined in 2006? I thought I'd joined longer ago, but I'm pretty sure I was lurking before I moved mid-2001.
posted by bentley at 10:30 AM on February 21, 2012

August 13, 2007, at work, during lunch, after having lurked since at least 2005 or so. Finally decided to bite the bullet, and haven't looked back since!
posted by LN at 10:52 AM on February 21, 2012

At my desk in the Radio Archives section of the CBC, where I was working at the time.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:13 PM on February 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was at my home office desk. MetaFilter was suggested to me by Stumble Upon, which has long since lost its interest for me. It was the blue that hooked me, as I was completely fascinated by the variety of posts, the appropriate use of grammar and accurate spelling by the commenters, and the general high IQ level around this place. I signed up right away, then waited impatiently to actually be able to comment. After which no one has successfully shut me up. Yet.

If I was true to form, I was in my standard home office uniform of very comfortable PJs, furry moccasin slippers, and a ratty old sweater, and I was drinking very strong black coffee.

However, I did not have the usual interruption by the Bear, asking if I'm "on Metafilter again?"
posted by bearwife at 1:18 PM on February 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

I think it was late one night, and if I go by my join date, in my first or second NY apartment about a year or so since I'd moved here. I'd been lurking for a while, but never joined up because I didn't really have the desire to make comments or FPPs. And after having piddled away a lot of free time in high school and college message boarding and getting up to other internet hijinks, I had been trying a bit of a web community participation detox since around senior year of college.

Anyhow, I'd just moved to the city. Had very few friends living here and mostly entertained myself by going to live shows alone or just walking around the city. New job stress, and all that weighing me down, which in turn contributed to a break up (oddly enough, it was this particular ex who introduced me to Metafilter), so I floundered a bit for a couple of months with nobody to talk to since I was having a hard time meeting new people. I decided to go to a meetup to be more social. I felt weird about going to a meet up sans account so I ponied up 5 bucks like a week or so before the meet up.

Years later, I don't go out to meet ups as much, but they at least got me out of the house regularly in those first bleak years of lonely city living. Still friends with some Mefites I met at my first couple of meet ups (was even roommates with one for a while), and nowadays I randomly call meet ups when I travel through places and have the time for one. I also make too long comments too often.
posted by kkokkodalk at 1:27 PM on February 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

It was the blue that hooked me, as I was completely fascinated by the variety of posts, the appropriate use of grammar and accurate spelling by the commenters, and the general high IQ level around this place.

Definitely, bearwife! I forgot to mention that, too. There are some real horrific "advice" sites and forums out there. Metafilter was definitely a relief and gave me renewed hope that there are intelligent people on the internet.
posted by foxhat10 at 1:38 PM on February 21, 2012

It was September 11, 2001 and I read somewhere that Metafilter was the place to go for updates on what was happening in NYC and elsewhere. It was. I joined three days later.
posted by tommasz at 1:50 PM on February 21, 2012

I was standing over a body when...

um....

You know, sitting around, doin' nothing.
posted by stormpooper at 2:13 PM on February 21, 2012

I was sitting in a virtually abandoned computer lab at college, having lurked the site for at least a solid year prior to that. I remember that despite everything good I'd seen, despite $5 being a pittance given the conversion rates, I was still hopelessly nervous when I signed up. For some bizarre reason, looking back it seems to be a memory I've got in good detail: the nerves, scrabbling around in my bag for my purse to get my card details, how the room smelt, how cold it was in the lab, the view from the window beside me... I wouldn't expect signing up here to be one of those moments that got neatly preserved by my memory, but that's the joy of my peculiar mind for you.
posted by Inner Universe at 4:01 PM on February 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

I was sitting down and facing front. Why would you want to know that?
posted by ceribus peribus at 6:03 PM on February 21, 2012

Conformist!
posted by Splunge at 6:47 PM on February 21, 2012

Almost exactly the same spot as right now.  Guess I should get up and move around a little.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 6:52 PM on February 21, 2012 [3 favorites]

This location, but about a year or so earlier.

I don't work there any more and, regrettably, those glasses broke.
posted by tangerine at 7:35 PM on February 21, 2012

Eating Double Stuff Oreos washing it down with a Diet Coke. I was upstairs at the time.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:36 PM on February 21, 2012

Right here. Well, not in the same exact spot, but in the same chair. I first was moved to sign up in 2002 but never seemed to hit an opening. I gave up and lurked. I don't talk much anyway,

In 2011, there was a question I wanted to answer. So I finally signed up. By the time I signed in, someone else had answered the question far better than I could have. So I lurked some more, only signed in.

I manage to answer an AskMe every once and a while. Here in my official MetaFilter reading chair in central Austin. Still have never posted to the blue, just the odd comment.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:41 PM on February 21, 2012

Home. Unlike now. Now I'm at work.
In my chair at my computer. Much like now, except the chair and computer are mine in a way that doesn't involve actual ownership.
posted by hat_eater at 3:04 AM on February 22, 2012

It was August 27, 2001 and I felt that something was about to happen and that I should join Metafilter.

I'd just broken up with my live-in girlfriend of four years. We had a great place in the Mission district but we both moved out of it. So, I was sharing a loft with an old friend of mine in the Dogpatch area of San Francisco.

Over ten years later, I am married and living in the UK. It's been a great journey, metafilter.
posted by vacapinta at 5:09 AM on February 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

October 2000, a different desk at a different job in a different world.
posted by briank at 8:01 AM on February 22, 2012

I set up my first account while sitting at this cheap "ready to assemble" particle board computer desk that sat between my kitchen and living room in my first shoebox apartment (Fox Hill, Golden CO), which I remember very fondly despite the constant drama and police presence brought on by drunken neighbors. All of the furniture was pretty much ready-to-assemble (think IKEA but 75% shittier) and systematically fell apart. We did have a massive and expensive-at-the-time (think 4 months' rent) sectional couch with every conceivable bell and whistle in the living room which completely filled it and was amazing; you'd just walk in the door from the outside and have this big ass sea of sofa that sauntered off towards the kitchen. Heh.

The computer was free -- I managed to win a Compaq desktop from "FreePC.com" which was an advertising-based venture that culminated in the company getting bought out by e-Machines so that they could crush their competitor's "'Free PC' based on banner ads" with a "'Free PC' subsidized by a horrible 2-year MSN contract."

...

I also wanted to share this deal of the day because I love MeFi and for whatever reason am really excited about it:

$15 USB HDTV Tuner
posted by aydeejones at 8:47 AM on February 22, 2012

"it" being the deal of the day. Of course I know why I'm excited about Metafilter. It's full of stars. And snowflakes.
posted by aydeejones at 8:49 AM on February 22, 2012

I was sitting on my couch. Like I'm doing now.
posted by TooFewShoes at 9:17 AM on February 22, 2012

Like so many of you, I joined at work, after years of lurking. There was no single post that made me join, but rather a desire to get in on the discussion from time to time and and to converse with you smarty pants-es....smarty panters? Smarty panties? Well, you know.

At work!
posted by but no cigar at 11:20 AM on February 22, 2012

A few days before 9/11.

Yes, before. (You connect the dots).
posted by jeremias at 6:01 PM on February 22, 2012

In the second bedroom / office / guest room in the duplex I was renting. It was decorated by a Midwestern mother, right down to pink Formica on the sink and a fuzzy toilet lid cover. Down the road was a diner that was clearly built in the 70's. In the second bedroom I could barely see the diner out the window right above the computer. It was the kind of diner that people would go to every day of their retirement to drink bad coffee and shoot the breeze. I longed to go to that diner, but my diet made it a rare occurrence. I did my best thinking in front of the computer at the desk built into the wall, or on the carpeted floor. I also tried and failed to repair my iPhone 3 on that desk.

Anyway, I was starting to think about moving on in life - had a few years of post-college employment under my belt, and I was starting to think about leaving my job for greener pastures and wondering if I'd meet someone special and settle down. Clearly, I had a lot of questions, and I tended to search Google for answers. I realized that a disproportionate number of the really good answers were coming from ask.metafilter.com, which is a site I'd seen before but never paid any attention to. $5 seemed like highway robbery for an internet site (c'mon, isn't the internet FREE?), but I eventually realized that I regularly blow much more cash than that and bought the membership. So worth it.

Writing that first question was nerve-wracking. I had seen the pile-ons that happen when the asker is clearly blind to their situation: "DTMFA!" "You seem jealous..." "Not safe to eat." I did not want to be the person who got that feedback, so posting my first question was tough. I think that's when I started my document of "questions to ask AskeMe sometime" - to draft my questions, make sure they weren't nuts, and save them for later due to the 1-per-week restriction. Fortunately, that first question received just 1 response, and it was positive and helpful.

51 questions, 100 drafted questions, 42 comments on the blue, and several years later I'm still a Metafilter addict. I'll get around to all of those AskMe questions sooner or later. And just as I had my views on feminism challenged and changed here, I'm sure I'll learn a great deal more. Clearly I value a lot of things about my life back in that duplex and the steps I was about to take, and joining Metafilter is a small-but-significant step that I remember fondly.
posted by Tehhund at 8:45 PM on February 22, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was at work, websurfing via MeFi, and I couldn't resist finally plopping my $5 on the table so I could make a crack about an FPP featuring an abysmal Sigur Ros interview on NPR. It garnered a favorite, and all bets were off after that.
posted by not_on_display at 7:03 PM on February 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

I was at my computer.
posted by karathrace at 12:53 AM on February 24, 2012

In my spare bedroom where my comp lives. Still there.
posted by bjgeiger at 5:48 PM on February 24, 2012

In a little house in rural PA. I'd been lurking for some time, and I think sign-ups were closed, and then they were open and I was in. On dial- up, I think.
posted by puddinghead at 8:57 PM on February 24, 2012

I was in Australia in 2000, working like a madman at what was simultaneously the best and worst job I'd ever had, hobnobbing with CEOs and running a team that was building a software/service package that was going to revolutionize the way our clients worked and set the company on a new technology path that would put it a decade ahead of its competitors.

Until our executive-board champion got shitcanned, momentum faltered, my team was slotted down under a new, clueless, downright hostile husband-wife middle manager duo that were slotted in as part of their deal when their company was acquired, and it all went to hell.

I toughed it out for another 7 months, then decamped for a nice, quiet, starvation-wages university gig here in Korea. Which is where I've been since -- Korea, at least.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:29 PM on February 27, 2012

In the Transamerica Pyramid. 2008 iirc. I like this exercise.
posted by xiaolongbao at 9:17 PM on March 13, 2012