It starts with guns and an interest or love of the shooting sports, of course.
You're either new to black rifles, or an old pro. You pick up a computer and it comes with an internet trial, or you can access from work, and before you know it you're on the "intarweb."
At some point, you see an link to AR15.COM or one of its mirrors.
For me, it was a link posted on Instapundit, who sent his readers to the forums here to read stories about LEO's profiling AR owners in connection with the DC sniper shootings.
You might browse for a while as an anonymous guest, just lurking and reading. You come to find that some of the folks are pretty knowledgable about the stuff you care about, and the personalities begin to be apparent. You find that appreciation of guns, gun rights, shooting and the like tends to foster certain viewpoints and thought processes that you like and enjoy. You realize that the folks in shooting, especially "EBR's" are like kindered souls.
Sooner or later you want to ask a question, so you sign up for the "freebie" account and post. You interact with the people here, and before you know it you can count some of them as "friends" -- at least so far as it goes on the internet.
You begin to visit the site everyday. You find that your friends here, the ones that drew you into the site in the first place, provide quick links to exactly the news stories you're interested in, and that their commentary on the stories are pretty cool too. You don't really come to post your stuff, although you do. Instead, the "draw" to the site is the content posted by the others, especially the folks who are interesting enough to have personalities that shine through even by way of text posts on a message board.
You eventually feel bad about leaching off of all the content provided by the stellar members and cough up some cash in order to get your "very own" avitar and to access the restricted areas. You're a little put off by the fact that the restricted area consists largely of a string of BOTD threads, troll pointers, and "just like G.D." stuff, but you're feeling a part of the community.
You look forward to the more interesting members' posts. Maybe they're talking about things the way you do, or maybe they've got another viewpoint they're expressing in a way you hadn't considered before, but perhaps should have. Maybe they have certain trademarks, anything from as inane as referring to one's self in the third-person, to inserting a witty parenthetical into a sig line, to posting kick ass gun photos, to shooting stuff and posting the results.
Eventually, some of those folks move on.
Sometimes they bow out.
Others are forced out.
The content doesn't seem the same to you anymore. The threads keep popping up, and you chuckle and wonder: "Heh, thus and so would have had something to say about that."
Some topics that resulted in very long, extremely enlightening debates when you were here before now get locked because of thread stomping, or changes in moderation that make even clear rhetorical hyperbole into verbotten topics. You pine for the days when you could have a serious bit of correspondence on a topic without the threat of a lock, etc. You've had one or more good threads trashed, not only locking them down, but deleted to the trash so you can't even copy and paste the text of some of the better analysis to your hard drive or whatever.
Enough of this and, at some point, you find yourself questioning the signal to noise raitio.
The place isn't the one you felt compelled to join anymore. Its got more trolls, infighting, and some of the things that once cemented people together -- i.e., the expiration of the AWB or the election seasons, aren't rising above the dreck so much anymore.
The content you came for, that you coughed up money to read and contribute to, is not the same anymore.
And, so, you stop posting as well.
That's how it goes. Some stay, others leave, and new folks join.
You can learn a lot in any community -- yes, even in a discussion forum --, but an important lesson is when to move on.
Best regards, everyone.
On with the show.