I guess can tell the story of how I decided to become a member. I became aware of SG around 2008 through Brad Warner's book "Zen Wrapped In Karma Dipped In Chocolate". For those of you who haven't heard of him Brad Warner is an author of awesome Zen books as well as a musician and all around cool dude. At the time he had a regular column on SG so he referenced it in his books. I really liked "Zen Wrapped In Karma Dipped In Chocolate"; you should go buy his books and read his blog, like now, go ahead this post will be here when you're done.
So, anyway, I read Mr. Warner's other books, started meditating and began visiting SG semi-regularly to read his column. At the time I was skeptical about the alternative beauty idea, mostly because I'm naturally skeptical of everything. Then I read the note on Lyxzen's Post Secret set which is about this super cool art project she was working on at the time and that convinced me of the sincerity of the site so I became a member. Not the most fascinating story ever told but I must start somewhere I suppose.