I find statistics interesting. I guess this is part of what makes me a nerd.

	6% (5)	I know Jon/Phillip intimately & personally
	48% (36)	I got forwarded from another site or comic
	5% (4)	I found them at a convention, then got hooked from there
	29% (22)	I was surfing for porn when I decided to just type 'www.goats.com'
	9% (7)	I got the link when searching for 'eggplant' in a search engine

Surely I'm not unusual in "A mate gave me the url"?

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to albionsoft (#16431):

Yeah, me too. I guess it's hard just to pick five options for the poll, though.

Comment to all: If your method of achieving goats-awareness isn't covered by the list, write a post about it.

In Response to albionsoft (#16431):

and me. He found Diesel Sweeties and then Goats from there. I am eternally grateful. As should Jon be, becuase I am beyond broke, but I'm a super premium member who buys shirts. Thanks Jon, for helping to put my bank account further into the red.

Well, I'm pretty sure I found Goats on my own and not through someone else.

But I don't really remember how or exactly when.

In Response to zamphir (#16440):

I thought you were spawned by the site itself, as an inevitable result of the fora achieving sufficient complexity.

In Response to tynic (#16448):

Well, given that I'm the source of a large percentage of the complexity of the fora...

Or is that a large portion of the inanity of the fora...?

I can never remember.

I believe Lockergnome.com had a link to here waaay back in 1997. I took place in the new character vote [goats.com] and went for Howard. Jon was just as responsive to email then as he is now.

In the wee olde years of nineteen ninety nine, I was very very bored. Such boredom prompted me to start typing in various words into the browser in attempts to find fun sites. When I typed www.goats.com I was pleasantly surprised at the result. And then I read the entire archive. This was right before the "Fear and Toothnip..." series.

But I wasn't searching for porn, alas.

I started reading the site back at the end of 1999. A friend I worked with forwarded the link to me. I don't quite remember the comic. It was probably one of the movie spoofing ones. Not that it mattered, I spent the next two working days reading all the archives up until that point. Nothing like getting paid to read Goats. Ahh, those were the days.

It took me a while to bother registering, because long ago, I didn't believe in putting my name down on anything Internet. Then, I think last year sometime, I foolishly wandered into the forums, and now I am as hooked as anyone can be hooked to such wonderfully spawned evil. My only regret is not being able to give Jon more of my hard earned money.

And then there was that thing about the monkeys...but that's a story for another time.

A friend kept saying "blerg eat kitty" so I made her explain the reference. I then read the entire archive at home with my very slow internet connection and was completely hooked. I think my friend heard about it from her roommate who was in computer science and spent a lot of time surfing the web. My friend doesn't read goats anymore though, I'm not sure why not.

In the back corner of the Ubercon Dealer room was a table. There was a guy standing behind it. He handed me a sheet. This sheet had some aliens playing dungeons and hamsters...and a chicken planning to beat snickers out of baby seals. After that, how could I not visit the site? Too bad I was a broke college student then.

In Response to DantePendragon (#16471):

Actually, I discovered goats while searching for 'Evil Cheese'. (I used to spend a lot of time pondering the fundamental concepts of 'Cheese' and 'Evil')

In Response to Lonely Goatherd (#16472):

And you are?

Um, none of the above. My freshman year of college (fall of 97 or spring of 98), one of my friends' boyfriends knew Jon, and so she got everyone on our hall reading Goats. It was a "thing" on our floor all four of my years there - at one point we were going to paint a mural of the Geek Patrol in our hallway, but everyone was too lazy to get around to it.

I guess choice #1 would be closest, but I've never personally met Jon.

A question at a college trivia competition (it's the sport of unathletic, pedantic kings!) mentioned the strip. This was in, oh, let's say November '99.

Once again, I have actually already answered [goats.com] this question.

Although, I didn't start reading the comic until several months after that event. Dynedain pointed me to Goats. He's the one I blame (and the one you can blame) for my being here.

In Response to Clan_Hanna (#16492):

Once again, I have actually already answered this question.

Because, of course, we all memorise every word you say...

Cheers,
Graham

Mindspring linked to the strip from the personal pages - a few months after goats got started. Anyone remember "Fear of Doughnuts"?

In Response to albionsoft (#16494):

we all memorise every word you say...

I memorise every word that everyone says (in english). I just forget the order and the source.

In Response to tor (#16529):

I did that too... but then I backed my memory up into a dictionary.

I used to spend a lot of time pondering the basic universal concepts of 'Cheese' and 'Evil'. So one day I typed in 'Evil Cheese' and goats was about the top results, with the cheese of evil saga.

In Response to CHICKEN (#16532):

Hopefully, since you've registered, you won't get marked as -1 Stupid this time.

But you'll likely get marked as -1 Redudant...

Imagine, if you will, a man walking around campus wearing a 'Kittens=Poptarts' shirt. How could I resist? I HAD to find out more. And here I am.

In Response to zamphir (#16533):

I was just about to give him a -1 Redundant, but then I realised I had already replied.

In Response to albionsoft (#16494):

What I meant was that this is the second time a thread has come up with a question to which my answer is something I've already said. It just makes my life easier when I can refer back to something I've already said... to keep my story straight.