I started lurking and reading right after that unpleasantness in New Zealand. After an initial burst of near-daily reading the site, I became a more on again, off again visitor. But I really wanted to learn the site's culture before trying to participate.
I remember a couple of times during my lurking period when I decided to make an account, registrations were closed. D-oh!
2 years or so, first arriving to read amanda's posts on the shmorky thread, but first heard about the site in 2015 via ED's article on it getting featured while at the time dismissing the place as a largely inferior version of /cow/. but alas /cow/ is now dead and JEWS is no more.
Waited 3 years, knew I would get the newbie jitters and overly power level. Still dod but significantly less than what it could have been.
I understand social media and real life are very different and people are chill, I just still see every user as a different person still, which made it more nerve wracking. Stupid I know.
2 years and 1 month, exactly even coincidentally. Very common story... you can see another one posted on this very page. Christchurch happened and the footage was expunged everywhere except for one site where the admin was telling New Zealand to go fuck themselves for demanding it be taken down and I liked that kind of attitude more than I actually cared about seeing the footage ultimately. Afterwards I just lurked because I wasn't really interacting with anything on the internet in terms of posting.
Way back in the late 2000s and early 2010s I followed Chris-chan through 4Chan and mainly Encyclopedia Dramatica, but I fell of paying attention to lolcows when ED imploded. I made my account because of all people I found out UkinoJoe, who I knew about for just as long as Chris from watching his first things on Newgrounds and enjoyed his stuff through the years, was actually not a cool goofy guy but a jealous TDS suffering miserable shell who was bent on destroying any good will he had with anyone. It was so surprising to me based on his content. Thus, my first ever post.
This happened to be pretty close to the time the Ethan Ralph stuff exploded and he was making an ass of himself in increasingly elaborate ways and it ended up re-invigorating my interest in lolcows and is probably what ended up causing me to stick around.
I had been lurking since 2021, initially because of the thread about the highly autistic Hearts of Iron IV modding community. I finally opened an account last year.
7 years.
Or when ever the Keroleaks happened.
All other shitpost sites i had used are now dead, and the last niche imageboard i used that contained few lolcows met death through inactivity or got fucked with the same way 9chan was fucked with.(once, the fuckery came from IP registered to an NSA building)
about 2 years. Then I found out that my home was behind a registration firewall.
Now we are on the 2nd account (had a throwaway email), and you are gonna pry this one from my cold dead hands.
It's escaping me at this point for how long it was exactly that I lurked, but in late 2017 I remember coming across here from a DSP vid comment section and lurking for a bit before making my first account in 2018. I caught on to everything fairly quickly, especially the sign-up warnings.