In 2000 or so, a friend sent me a link to the blue, I don't remember what the thread was linking to, but I do remember that, while it was only fairly interesting, the conversation happening about it was fantastic.
I was hooked almost immediately.
When the internet meets the real world...
All my favorite moments here seem to involve the intersection of the online community and the real world; it's easy to get complacent about corresponding in a virtual space, where people are just names on a screen, but time and time again, between meetups, emotional support for the loss of a friend, internet sleuthing, helping strangers, interacting with other sites, and a thousand other examples, I see that what happens here is directly impacted by, and directly impacts my real world in way that I've never had another online space, or hell, any other space for that matter, live up to.
It makes me realize that there are real people out there, people I love and yet disagree with, people who are brilliant and still wrong, people who are angry and that makes them even more hilarious. The other contributers here are real people, and the very workings of the site make the interactions here more personal because I know that the writing on my screen came from someone who exists and I might care enough to meet one day.
So my fondest memory of the site? It'd be flippant to say "all of them" but for how much this place has affected my writing, my thought process, my interactions with others, and my ability to care about more than myself, I'm going to say, with a lot of honesty and earnestness; "most of them".
Thanks MeFi.
