A long while ago, late in 1999 or early 2000, I was randomly entering in domain names to see where they would lead me. I stumbled upon metafilter.com this way, and after looking at it for a few minutes I decided to bookmark along with Kuro5hin and Slashdot. Strangely, as my interest with the other two sides waned, I found myself visiting MF more often for the wide variety of topics and general feeling that it was ahead of the curve in discovering meme's and interesting sites.
"Administrator please hope me!" and the month before
Back when there were really only two parts to Metafilter (Meta proper and MetaTalk), I remember a little known post on MetaTalk that was made that started a meme now seen all over the internet including some clever merchandising eight years later. It wasn't exactly the moment the site clicked with me...but it was a moment in time that really sums up the MeFi culture and sense of humor...the site over time with me became something worth visiting daily.
While the MetaTalk post is a fond memory, one of my most vivid memories was reading the main site just a month before it..watching a national tragedy unfold in slow motion as I had just gotten coffee and was beginning work for the day. What I remember in particular is how surreal it all started out...and how much ahead of the major networks Metafilter was in getting new bits of information and making sense of what felt like chaos. The phone lines were overwhelmed, and many sites refused to load. But here...the community was able to find other outlets that were accessible. I'll never forget that day, and I'll never forget first seeing it unfold on the blue....