What were your first impressions upon stumbling on ATRL?

I thought it was a gay reddit. Until later I discovered that it's a very cultural place where sometimes users post insightful essays.

Also, what do your friends (if you have any outside the Hot 100) tell you when tell them about it?

"Ah! What a beautiful and kind community"

First thing I ever saw on this site was one of the old syg threads.
Where these Ciara stans were dragging the hell out of blasianlove
sums up my reaction

Literally

I was slayed by the creative use of .gifs and memes. ATRL was killing the .gif game wayyy before anywhere else on the internet as far as I'm concerned.

"Wtf is MDNA"

First thing I thought?

What a bunch of thirsty twinks....that I seem to have a lot in common with

I thought it was confusing at first because the layout is so different than other forums.

I link ATRL threads to my friends sometimes and they think it's funny but I'm the only person I know who's really into music so

I thought there were a lot of funny people here. And had no idea people could get so defensive over pop stars.

Yeah, I didn't start posting regularly until like mid-2013.

Gay, feminine, and horny.

I thought everybody was sending nudes to one another.

Slow

Old SYG, stan war Army vs Monsters (both posting pics of Gaga and Britney with bloody tampons )

I remember kworb and the girls making fun of black women the tone was set :toofunn2y:

Confusing. Lemme go back to reddit. But then I discovered Random Thoughts.

I was so fascinated. I was so happy I could talk to others about pop music and music charts

I thought 90% of the members were girls. Not even kidding.