What was it that hooked you into the FlyerTalk Community?
 

Lots of people join FT, make a couple of posts and then leave. Others get hooked and stick around for years and years and make hundreds, even thousands of posts.

For those of you have become hooked, what was it that attracted you and inspired you to stick around?

When I began to realize how little I knew about something I did every week ... that was when I was fully hooked. I found FT through a google search about something or other, probably trying to figure out how the upgrades worked and found out sooooo much more. It has allowed me to use the programs to get the most out of them - especially some nice free nights at very nice hotels, some free flights and even free Bose headset. Not to mention the great conversations and news pieces on OMNI.

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I got hooked by listening to Randy Petersen back in 2000 on some show... caused me to come to this website... and realize all the miles/points I was not getting credited for.

Shortley thereafter I found out about a United/Hilton promotion that gave me LOTS of miles and points... and the rest is history.... :)

I can also say that the positive response when I first posted was great... I made a major boo boo and posted the same question in MilesBuzz and TravelBuzz and I was not berated by the "old timers".... that treatment probably kept me around.... :D

Into Community - watching people make drunken spectacles of themselves at events. Watching the Chicago Do with about 100 people unfold drunkenly probably six years ago was where it reached sufficient critical mass to take hold.

When I read the thread about the mistake fare YYZ-LCA in J on AZ. I didn't find out about it until later.

Though I was able to get in on the YYZ-OTP fare on KL, it was not in J.

I have a feeling there will be "the ultimate" mistake fare soon .. so I should stick around :p

I'm not hooked. I can quit whenever I want. Really. I'm not hooked, I tells ya!

It was the free drugs!
 

Or should I say, miles? :) This was long before FT became the swinging place it is now.

Oh, man! I think you need to join the FT 12 Steps Programs. :D:D

Or should I say FT 12 Miles Program? Not enough incentive in 12 miles, right? No wonder Randy didn't start the program. :p

Honestly, it was the type of people on here.

I'm a business traveler, and it's interesting communicating with other frequent fliers who travel for business. We have a lot of similarities so it's a great place to have a sound board for ideas and various thoughts.

So basically a like-minded community of people to interact with.

i love how we all come from different backgrounds, and do different things for a living, and yet we all still share a passion for flying, travel, enjoying life and getting some bang for our buck! Who would have thought that the people who sit in aluminum tubes would turn out to be the most interesting!

For me, it was definitely the "community". I lurked as far back as the original days of FT (and remember when the PIP was being planned thinking "what was wrong with these CRAZY people getting on an airplane to go to Hawaii for only a weekend to meet strangers").

Then I had two events occur.

One, I decided to make the push for Executive Platinum and while the concept of "mileage running" was still kind of odd to me, I had this weird ticketing problem that I needed to do a Wed-Fri Denver trip and a Sun-Tues San Diego trip. The combined total of both tickets was like $1700 and on a whim, I decided to price the TPE fare on AA everyone had talked about (around $500) and figured out that I could go DFW-DEN-SJC-TPE-SJC-SAN-DFW for only $700-ish so I convinced my boss to sign a memo to corporate travel (our company was 100% US domestic at that time) to let me book that ticket. I showed up for my flight that was going to have a dozen or so other FTers on it having an "expectation" of what FTers were going to "be like" (and I'll admit, it wasn't that positive) and had every one of my preconceptions shattered that weekend.

Two, after that, 9/11 happened... literally while I was still on the last leg of that trip. I was stuck in SAN alone (my business colleague who I was with panicked and got in our rental car and was 200 miles away before thinking that he might need to call me at the hotel and tell me he was driving back to Texas without me!) I logged into FT Chat and it was nice and reassuring to talk (in real time) with other business travelers that were in my shoes and understood what my friends/family back home didn't.

And then a couple of weeks later I attended my first DO (locally, in DFW) and met a couple of friends that have become friends for life - and it just all took hold.

I wouldn't have "engaged" in FT though if it weren't for the Community. I would have just sat back and posted occasionally and probably taken more than I'd given had I not been pulled in by the people.

For me, pretty much like what some one else said. The FT community, between here & FFOCUS I've meet the nicest folks on the planet.

Hmm. I have always been interested in collecting miles, I just didn't know there was a sub-culture of people out there dedicated to it, until I read the wired article last year.

Why have I stayed, well I just booked ATL-JNB in J, something a year ago I would have thought impossible.

A similar question was asked in a now closed thread in TravelBuzz! Forum back in March (due to its OMNI potential, I believe). I am just going to repeat myself here.

If you insist we have an "intellectual conversation" on FT addiction, I would probably say FT feeds our intellectual buds while we "waste", I mean "invest", our precious time learning something we can "reasonably" achieve, relate, and understand in real life (from FTers' perspectives of course ;)).

We get to see the real "growth" in our mileage/points banks. While cranking up our miles/points collections, we get to "see" the world through fellow FTers' accounts as well. A social trap, I mean "network", is formed and group identity developed along the process. More importantly, there's no exit. Once you are in, I mean REALLY in, you are hooked.

Somehow FT makes me a better person but a worse student. God help me. I don't think there's any way out now. Plus, Randy hasn't set up the FT 12 Steps Program yet. :( :p

I got interested in optimizing miles while flying BOS-ORD-BOS monthly for a few years around 1990. I found out I could get 5,500 miles and sit in front for the price of a coach seat on Delta. A couple of years later I found myself approaching the end of December with about 49,500 DL status miles in the bank, so the concept of a mileage run suggested itself. The FA on my BOS-LGA-BOS turn-around flight thought it was a bit odd, but once I explained, agreed that it made sense.

The discovery that there are actually other people who shared my addiction was a delightful surprise. What really hooked me, though, was meeting some of those people - at a Catman Do in New York in March 2001, the San Diego Do in July of that year, and many more later (on five continents so far). There are people I may not see from one year to the next, but I consider them real friends. That,* more than the still-useful factual content, is what keeps me coming back.

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*And the occasional opportunity to plug Macs in Travel Technology.