NotDarkYet Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 Many businesses will ask a customer, "how did you hear about us", to gauge the effectiveness of advertising resources, etc Do we do something like that here on FDR? If not, would this be valuable? Maybe we could ask this question when people sign up on the forums. Just a thought. I ask because I often mention FDR when commenting on Youtube videos and I wonder if anyone has ever come here because of one of my comments.
dsayers Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 Many businesses will ask a customer, "how did you hear about us", to gauge the effectiveness of advertising resources, etc Do we do something like that here on FDR? When I joined, there were a couple questions on the application that you can find on my profile. There's more now than there was when I first joined, so it is something that they started doing at one point. Not sure if it's something that can be turned off in a person's profile though, so maybe some don't get published.
Kevin Beal Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 Actually, this is asked when new people join the boards. You can view my profile and scroll to the bottom to see what it looks like. I also make a point of asking people who've introduced themselves in that sub forum questions like this. In my experience, it is completely random. I don't have analytics to look at and maybe the staff know, but anything and everything seems to be the introduction. I think that's very interesting. Word of mouth seems to be underrepresented. The two most common ones I've seen are people who saw the Zeitgeist debates and video responses, and also viewers of the Joe Rogan Experience. But still very random.
Pepin Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 To avoid a long post, I will make bullet points of the sequence Got into libertarianism Found Mises and Reason tv Watched a lot of videos Stumbled upon a Bob Murphy video on anarchism and was convinced. It wasn't an idea I had even contemplated. I didn't really even know what a government was. An anarchist popped up in a Reason video, someone in the comments posted about Stefan Molyneux being a great anarchist source for anyone interested Look him up, saw "The Story of your Enslavement" and everything clicked. It was the only explanation of government that I understood.
NotDarkYet Posted December 9, 2014 Author Posted December 9, 2014 I first heard of Stef back when he was posting articles on Lewrockwell and Strike the Root (was that 2006?), I remember being blown away at his clarity of thought. Then I randomly saw the "Will Kill" video (and I didn't associate it with the guy who wrote the Lewrockwell articles ) and thought, WOW, this guy knows how to think. Then later I realized, it's the same awesome dude.
Existing Alternatives Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 I heard Stefan speak at a Liberty Now event. I was very surprised that everyone in the audience knew who he was, so he did not even bother introducing himself. When I got home I googled him and found his podcasts and have not stopped listening yet. Joined the board a year later more as a supplement...
Anuojat Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 Got into libertarianism trough Lisening to Penn and Tellers Bullshit tv show actually XD And trough that to Stefans "19 tough questions for libertarians". Also becoming atheist was monumental... for growth of reason in my mind.
TheFreeMarketIsAnarchy Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 For me it was also Stef's answer to Jon Stewart's 19 Tough Questions for Libertarians! I saw in it the related videos to a Daily Show clip that I was watching on Youtube. I had been exposed to Voluntaryism once before through the awesome facebook page 'Freedom is a state of Mind' but after watching this video of Stef's then everything clicked. It was a total eureka moment, like all the anger and frustration that I had towards the government could now be put into a clear and rational philosophical framework! No turning back since then!
prolix Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 2008, "Statism is Dead" series came across my recommended videos on youtube. Hooked! Never missed a show since... 2
Zelenn Posted December 9, 2014 Posted December 9, 2014 Started as a Christian Liberal from Kentucky in the military (yes that was a weird experience.) Ditched Christianity... To become a Wiccan (facepalm) Ditched Wica to go Taoist (ah, it hurts, just let me die LOL) Ditched Taoism to go Buddhist WHILE entertaining Republican politics (...what?) Was a Buddhist truck driver that read Ayn Rand... and the scorched clouds of religion were dispersed and the rich, sunlit fields of Atheism were glimpsed and my brain naturally recalibrated itself. :-D Discovered Stef while looking for Objectivist vids. And its been a non stop, massive, facefisting punch of Logic and Truth ever since. What a strange and jagged path. Best part!! I'm not even done yet. 1 1
NotDarkYet Posted December 9, 2014 Author Posted December 9, 2014 What made me aware of the podcast was "Ron Paul, a Postmortem" or (or something like that) that he posted on Strike the Root. Most of us seemed to have found FDR based on our interest in something tangential to philosophy. So, it seems like a good idea to make more current event videos, and Stef-responds-to-X-celebrity videos
Jeff_NH Posted December 20, 2014 Posted December 20, 2014 I first heard of it at the 2009 NH Liberty Forum. Sadly, I did not actually make it to Stefan's talk but a few others at the conference were talking about Stefan. Not sure exactly when I first visited the website. I know I did not listen to the podcasts at all until just a few years ago (2012 I think).
PatrickC Posted December 21, 2014 Posted December 21, 2014 Like threebobs, I kind of fell onto Stef's YouTube channel in either late 2007 or early 2008. Mostly because I was looking for criticism of Ron Paul, despite my liking of his ideas at the time. This may have also coincided with a couple of blurry Rothbard videos, where I first heard someone very seriously and rationally express ideas about anarchism. To be honest I'm not sure of the timeline, as it all happened within a rather short space of time (3 months or so). I was finally compelled by two videos that Stef produced. I saw the video (which may have been my first) where he was promoting UPB after having just finished writing it. I was really drawn to the idea of someone developing a 'rational proof for secular ethics' (without religion yay!). I was like, 'wow, really!'. Looking back, I'd been drawn to nihilism for all the right reasons. Post religious upbringing and strong atheism had driven me to believe (rightly) that I had been lied too. But unconsciously I realise now, I was like, 'this sounds interesting' and a possible escape hatch from nihilism. The video that finally had me never looking back was the original, 'Standing In Blood' video. I was so blown away by this video that I shared it with my father. My father later said, 'oh this guy is far too emotional'. It was then that I realised that I wasn't normally compelled by sentimentality. Having been brought up by this man not to be of course. It was Stefan's rationality that gave me pause, not so much his tears. It all makes sense now from my families perspective of course, but was a wonderful moment of enlightenment all the same.
shirgall Posted December 21, 2014 Posted December 21, 2014 I came to FDR from Stef's appearances as a guest host of the Peter Schiff show. 1
VolT Posted December 21, 2014 Posted December 21, 2014 * Started listening to random pod casts on long walks * Bumped into Neil deGrasse Tyson podcasts * Neil did podcast with Joe Rogan, it was awesome, started to listen to other Joe Rogan podcasts. * Stef did podcast with Joe Rogan, i dont remember what I liked, i think I just felt that he was being very geniune and saying whatever needs to be said.
Naer Posted December 22, 2014 Posted December 22, 2014 Searched objectivism in Google. Biggest mistake in my life 1 2
tasmlab Posted January 8, 2015 Posted January 8, 2015 Heard him subbing for Peter Schiff and then never listened to Peter Schiff again as I had 3,000 FDR podcasts to catch up on.
andkon Posted January 8, 2015 Posted January 8, 2015 After years of running a business and realizing that taxation was theft, I searched for alternatives to monopoly courts (everything else wasn't that hard to research or imagine) in maybe May 2012 and I found Stef's old LewRockwell articles.
AynRand Posted January 10, 2015 Posted January 10, 2015 I was watching Jacob Spinney's the state is not great, and one of the suggested searches was Jon Stewart's 19 Tough Questions for Libertarians! 1
Fire Posted January 11, 2015 Posted January 11, 2015 Found stef through the early articles on lewrockwell: http://www.lewrockwell.com/author/stefan-molyneux/ When googling to find another article, there was a podcast where he was reading his own article. That's when I discovered the podcast. (Nowadays I'm mostly accessing the content via youtube.)
Canoe_Captain Posted January 14, 2015 Posted January 14, 2015 I was searching for well researched Bitcoin videos on YouTube and found one of Stefan's videos on Bitcoin, probably "The Truth About Bitcoin". I was fairly knowledgeable about Bitcoins already and rarely found a video where the person knew well what he/she was talking about. Stefan made a good impression because he knew the facts and added some of his own thoughts on top of it. Since this was a rare occurrence in autumn 2013 I looked at his other videos.
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