Boatmurdered made me play Dwarf Fortress.
I found out about Dwarf Fortress at the same time I found out about Minecraft, on Shamus Young's Twenty Sided blog, but I played Minecraft first. Talk around Minecraft probably brought up Boatmurdered at some point.
I had been reading Twenty Sided because of Shamus Young's "DM of The Rings" series.
I learned about DM of The Rings through the Darths & Droids webcomic, which at the time was still on the Star Wars prequels.
I learned about Darths & Droids through TVTropes.
Oh my god—it all goes back to TVTropes. I thought I had escaped it...but...this whole time...oh my god...
I thought I found out about DF on Twenty Sided Blog too. But his first post sounds really unfamiliar and it's 2009-11-12, when I created my account 2008-05-13, and I know I was playing it for at least a couple months or more before I delurked and joined the forum. It also predates the TPS comics.
I know I was already playing DF when I read Boatmurdered.
At the time I would have been out of school for a couple years, having just left work at a lens manufacturer and starting work at a desk job downtown. By then I was out of the Ultima Online emulator community, not yet into the OSR D&D blogging community, but into various webcomics and stuff.
Specifically, in the midst of Achewood but post-B3TA and Weebl, and at the tail end of enjoying Homestar Runner.
Which is to say, in sum, that I don't remember anything and had to use Wikipedia and my resume to figure any of this out.