As today is Goats 8th birthday I just wanted to say well done Jon (and Phillip). The artwork has improved but the irreverence, thank God, has remained.

Keep going, and may there be many more Aprils for you!

	17% (7)	1997
	26% (11)	1998/1999
	19% (8)	2000/2001
	21% (9)	2002/2003
	14% (6)	2004/2005

I know I started regularly reading from reunion [goats.com] but I am also sure I occasionally read goats before that. Looking at the archive I get confused. I remember the transatlantic phone call (bobbins switch) [goats.com] but that was before and so was road rules and nihilism [goats.com] which I remember reading as they came out.

I thought I first read Goats before I went to Hungary, but that was July '97 and goats.com was not launched until August. My small beer fueled mind just can't work this one out.

Shortly before the Fear and Toothnip series was when I got picked up by the boat.

I don't remember exactly when I started reading Goats - as in what series I first saw; I just know that I was about 15 or so when I stumbled onto the site.

I found goats through the banner ad Luvrhino placed on Television Without Pity [television...utpity.com] to support that site. I think it was after I got married, which means it was sometime in 2002 or 2003. But really, who can tell? Time has no meaning for me anymore. I do like knowing, however, that the day I started reading Goats could be pinpointed. (Not by me, but still: someone could tell.)

Anyway, I read all of the archives that afternoon, and was hooked.

And by the way, my relationship with Goats has now lasted longer than my marriage did. (I'm not really sure what to do with that information.)

Halfway through the "Megan" series, about a month before I moved to Melbourne. My ex-boyfriend sent me the link, though he now has no recollection whatsoever of having even seen Goats.

Weird.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I started reading Goats after I saw the guys at Ubercon. I even have the glossy teaser to prove it.

In Response to GeminiCrash (#26472):

I was about 15 or so

Stop lying.

You've been here more than 6 months already....

;-)

Actually, I'm not 100% positive whether it was fall 97 or Jan or so 98, but I'm pretty sure it was fall 97 and that makes me cooler so I'm putting that. :^P

Well, the last time at least some of us talked about this, I said that I came in around Neil & Bob's Big Adventure.

But that was in 2000. And I know where I was working when I started reading Goats, and I left that job in 1999. So I must have started reading somewhere in late '97 or mid '98.

In Response to zamphir (#26488):

I was 15 in 2000. I'm sure I could go back to the archives and figure out about where I showed up. It's just a little hard to remember because I did read a rather large portion of the archived comics; I was on the computer for God only knows - because I sure as Hell don't remember - how many hours that day.

I came through this comic right here [goats.com], but it was a little after the fact, although it was still during the "In Soviet Russia" craze over at slashdot. So I'm guessing it was probably December 2002 or January 2003. But for the life of me I can't remember the first non-archive comic that I read.

I noticed that many of the faithful are having a hard time remembering when they first started reading Goats. This is a sure sign that the subliminal messages in the comic strips are working.

In Response to sentdata (#26523):

I think it's because we've all been around long enought to have answered it before.

We have also all been around long enough to have destroyed memory since.

And lastly we've been around long enough to know that if we contradict ourselves we are dead meat.

For me it was somewhere around the beginning. I think I read the archive in about half an hour on 56k dialup and it was the mindspring.com (or whatever site).

In Response to tor (#26525):

Mindspring [goats.com] it was.

I voted for Howard the Eggplant [goats.com] way back in 1997.

First strip I ever read was this one [goats.com] (on the day it came out). My roommate had just read it and woke me up with his laughing.

In Response to zamphir (#26500):

Hmm... [wikipedia.org]

In Response to mcgrue (#26694):

Hmm...

"It was a mistake! I am imperfect!"

One of my college housemates posted this one [goats.com] on his door the day after it came out.

I read the archive the next day and I've been reading ever since.

I think that I started reading Goats around late Pork and Adultery/early Tangled Web. The Republicans for Voldemort strip was in there, and while I don't think that it was the first Goats that I read, it may have helped to cement my allegiance.

At the same time, I think that I read the Nippleby saga, which was much earlier, before I really plowed through the archives. A friend may have sent me a link to it, perhaps before I really started reading the strip.