One of my favorite things about the Kickstarter campaign livestreams was hearing everyone tell their stories about how they discovered MST3K, and what got them to start watching the show.
So I’m curious… How did you discover MST3K and what made it connect with you?
My dad would watch it and I watched them with him. I also was introduced to the Twilight Zone because of him, and even Monty Python haha.
Found it on Comedy Central in the '90s, and got really hooked when I met the awesome people on the Prodigy MST3k message board.
I was in New York to see The Rolling Stones in September 2002. Just about to leave my hotel room when MST3K came on, Time Chasers. Two hours later went to the HMV (remember them?) and bought The Brain That Wouldn’t Die on DVD. I think the show was shown briefly here in the UK but MSTies here are pretty much too small to be a cult.
I love hearing people’s MSTories (as someone dubbed it over on the KS)
I found it via fanfiction. I belonged to a site where we used to “MST” bad fanfiction. Decided to check out the show itself, scouring YT for episodes, and fell in love. It became one of my “night time” listens, something I could put on at night to listen to as I fell asleep (or accidentally stay up all night watching episodes!)
I missed the first KS and I’m super bummed but I’m glad YT algorithm promoted me towards the MST3K channel announcing this latest one
Fist saw the show when I was a kid in the early 90s at a neighbor’s house, and rediscovered it when it moved to the SCFI channel in the early 2000s. I always like the back and forth between Tom and Crow.
Too small to be a cult? What is your threshold needed to be a cult and how many does there need to be to be too big to be a cult?
We happened across it one night when it was fairly new to the Comedy Channel (before It became Comedy Central a couple years later). It was, what’s this? We were almost instantly hooked and watched it fairly consistently as my kids were growing up. They have also become long time fans.
Me and my Dad would watch Monty Python in the kitchen of our house, it was ‘our’ time together 
My brother got me into MST3K, he saw an episode and came running into my room and told me I had to see this and I never looked back…
My parents divorced when I was pretty young, when I would go stay with my Father we would stay up late watching Comedy Central (Comedy Channel back then) If I could make it past the Daily Show with Craig Kilborn I was treated to this really weird show that had cool robot puppets and a badass dogbone shaped satellite. I was far too young to get a lot of the humor but it stuck with me, I started my own pursuit of the entire series in 2005 when I acquired the entire series and have been watching it ever since.
Like many, MST3K has gotten me through many dark and lonely evenings, the death of my father and many others that were close to me. I find by and large the community has latched onto this series as a sort of mental and emotional comfort food. At this point it’s pure unadulterated nostalgia crack.
So here’s the story: last year’s January, I was trying to find what I want to watch on TV, until on IFC, I discovered MST3K. As I kept watching the first episode I saw (Bride of the Monster), I fell in love with the show. And I’ve been watching MST3K ever since.
Mid-2000’s I was over at a friend’s place, and he popped in the Rhino VHS of Pod People. I was entranced, and the next day, I went out and bought a copy of Pod People (still a favorite episode). I tried to catch other episodes, but I did not have cable, so I mostly saw the handful I could get ahold of on VHS.
MST3K remained a fun novelty for the next decade, catching an episode every once in a while. Then the Netflix seasons were released, and I realized MST3K is not a novelty, it is an essential part of life. I’ve been slowly working my way through the back catalogue ever since.
I like that … MSTories 
I found it on a local UHF station that bought the syndication package that was offered in the mid-1990s. This station was kind of notorious. One of their nightly bits of programming was footage they shot at local strip clubs and they played pretty violent anime on Sunday nights. The first episode I saw was The Magic Sword, and I was in love.
Long ago, when cable tv was first run out to my house, i was flipping through channels, when i hit on a show that was running old black and white movies with people sitting in front talking. It looked like a terrible show so i kept surfing. Later when my wife came home, I showed her the show and said who would watch something so stupid. We laughed and i left it on while we ate dinner and soon i was watching and getting alot of the jokes. From that day on I haven’t missed a show and its still my favorite program of all time.
It was sometime in late summer of '91. I had gone out drinking with a buddy and we had staggered back to his place. We were just hanging out on the balcony and his roommate yells from the living room, “Daddy-O’s on!”
This cryptic declaration caused my buddy to burst out laughing and inform me that “You have to check this out.”
I was immediately hooked.
I had just come home from a Cub Scout meeting and my dad was in the den watching this show that had these silhouettes at the bottom of a human and two robots. The silhouettes were making fun of this old black and white horror movie called The Slime People. It was really funny! And the rest is history…
My sister showed it to me late one night in the 90s. I don’t remember how she found it but we’ve been watching ever since.
We were visiting my grandparents in the early 90s for Christmas one year, and we were channel surfing and by chance came across MST3K playing on the Comedy Channel. It was Santa Clause vs. the Martians. We were instantly drawn to the show and have been fans ever since.
And now my 15 year old son is a big fan, too.