123Stodg

Sounds good, congrats. I just hope 3 to 5 years from now (or sooner) you are still waiting for her sandwich pictures and not posting a dramatic return to Tinder story.

For a long time I have thought about the ways Thailand has changed since the rise of smartphones, back when people were not constantly nose diving into their screens. When I first arrived, smartphones did not even exist. My first phone was a big clunky Nokia with a black and white screen and a bendy retractable antenna. Then came the race to make phones smaller, with those tiny little Motorola flip phones everywhere. Nokia and Ericsson were still popular, although not quite as compact. Then the iPhone arrived, and everything changed. It took a few more years, maybe five or six, but eventually everyone had some form of smartphone. Fast forward to 2026 and it is almost impossible to go anywhere without seeing people face planted into their screens, doom scrolling every spare minute. So I started wondering how this change has actually affected everyday life in Thailand. There have definitely been some gains and some losses. These days in Thailand, when you walk down the street in the city, people are staring straight into their phones and walk directly towards you as if they are blind. If you do not move, they will walk straight into you without ever looking up. In the past, there was always the classic Thai soi strut of ambling side to side on the pavement and never choosing a lane, making it hard to get past them, but now it is different. They walk in a perfectly straight line, they just have no idea where they are going. On the plus side, far fewer Thai guys sitting around with nothing to do who feel the need to strike up long, curious and monotonous conversations about nothingness with a passing foreigner. That alone might be considered progress. You also notice it in places where people used to naturally engage with what was around them. Couples now sit together at cafes and restaurants in total silence, each absorbed in their own screen like they are in separate relationships. On the backs of motorbikes, passengers no longer look around at the world flying past them. They scroll through TikTok while weaving through traffic as if the laws of physics will never punish them for not paying attention while their driver squeezes through narrow gaps. At traffic lights, half the people crossing the street at zebra crossings look like sleepwalkers, drifting forward while staring down, trusting that cars will not flatten them out of pure carelessness. Even in lifts, that old awkward silence has disappeared. Not because people have become more social, but because nobody looks at anyone at all anymore. Ten people can stand shoulder to shoulder, each fully absorbed in their own device, as if the others do not exist. And in places that used to be about actually being in the moment, like parks, temples, or markets, the experience now seems to be about filming it badly in vertical format so that it can be uploaded to the Gram and forgotten about five minutes later. So, there are upsides and downsides. On one hand, fewer random conversations and less idle chatter. On the other, a noticeable drop in basic awareness of the physical world. People might bother you less, but they are far more likely to walk straight into you while doing it. 😄

I am not going to address anyone directly because I do not want anyone to feel like a jilted lily, but I have noticed something interesting about my own forum reading habits. For one, I read far more than I post. Often I do not even log in to scan through a few topics, and if someone averages about a dozen posts a day, I tend to skip right over anything they write. It did not start that way. At first I just noticed certain posters who write extremely long posts waffling on about their personal lives, their lifestyle habits, and their deeply detailed view of the world, usually containing far more personal information than anyone would ever ask for on an anonymous forum. Then there are the snarky smug types who appear in nearly every popular thread like a mosquito at a picnic, dropping a little off topic jab that is of no use at all and apparently hilarious to them, but no one else. Eventually I started paying attention to the usernames I was automatically scrolling past. A pattern emerged. Many of them are obsessive posters who seem to appear in every popular thread, sometimes firing off three or four replies in rapid succession, arguing, bickering, hijacking, and generally poppycocking their way across the forum. Sometimes it even starts to feel like certain threads have quietly turned into a two man conversation where two of these regulars are going at each other and everyone else is just sitting back and rolling their eyes. Which got me thinking that there might actually be an unwritten forum law at work here. Somewhere around the 10 to 20 posts per day mark, a strange phenomenon occurs where the human brain simply stops reading anything written by that person. In fact, the opposite of what they probably intended starts to happen. The more they post, the less one really notices what they say. It also makes me wonder what the daily routine behind it all looks like. Do these chaps go to bed at night thinking about what threads they will tackle again in the morning? Do they sit down with a coffee at sunup and settle in for another solid eight to ten hour shift of forum duty? And at the end of the day do they lean back in their chair feeling chuffed, like they have really put in a productive day’s work? Do they feel like they are leading fulfilling and satisfying lives and that they have found their true source of happiness? Or are they oblivious to what they are doing? Many do not even seem to reside in Thailand, so I am just trying to get my head around the mindset here. Presumably there is no self loathing going on and it never occurs to them that they could be doing more productive things with their time. Well, I keep it simple now. If someone shows up everywhere posting like it is a full time occupation, I just skip their posts entirely. It is nothing personal. It is simply an efficiency strategy. Apparently the secret to being read more on a forum is surprisingly simple. Have something useful to say and post less. lol.

Trust me, nobody would miss you, not even a little. In fact, nobody would even notice you disappeared. Try it and see.

If you wait to renew until one day after your license expires, then you get 6 years on the renewal. Same reaction, vision, perception, and color tests for at least 20 years. All the same. Nothing new. People under the age of 50 can now start renewing online starting June of this year. It won't help anyone over age 50, but queues and waiting times should be reduced with fewer younger people renewing in person. Renewing at Taling Chan is better than at Chatuchak. Shorter lines. No foreigners.

I say Thailand should ban entry to anyone whose forum username results in the initials GG, HF, BS, and KSM. Others can add to the list as they see fit.

I’ll simplify it. I generally don’t read anything from those who post an average of more than 10 times per day. If they do, it usually means they have nothing useful or important to say.

The fact is we all consume online slop. I’m probably consuming too much of it myself. When you scroll on any digital content platform now, it’s repetitive AI slop everywhere. Clean, polished, structured, and somehow saying absolutely fark all. Like cheap fast food that looks like a perfect plastic specimen in the photo and then tastes like rubbish. Then you come on AN and there’s a different flavor. Human slop. Spicy, salty, often unhinged and weird, sometimes comedic. Low effort snipes, boring, recycled arguments, drive by sarcasm, bickering sprinkled on top. Not exactly nutritious, but oddly addictive for quite a few residents here it seems. So which flavor do you prefer? The polished artificial stuff, or the messy home cooked forum version? Both probably bad for us, especially in excess. Yet here we are, either going back for another big plate of it in the morning, or just a little nibble.

Well that was quick. This topic went from zero to hyper unhinged, unintelligible cyber babble courtesy of one man in record time.

Quite a bit of what people post on here is fiction. And much of what people write is for effect, to conjure a reaction, or to be sarcastic or humorous. Windups, as they are known. So I never believe any of it, nor do I ever spend a moment trying to work out whether something someone wrote is fiction or not. Some people also have strange senses of humor that I often do not understand, so I cannot always judge whether someone is trying to be funny or serious based solely on written words. In fact, whether it is fact or fiction does not even matter to me. It is the meaning that I focus on more. So for me, it was never about whether your story about a girlfriend who had her brother murdered was true or not. I did not give that a second thought, and I have no way of knowing whether it is true. What caught my attention was how you worded it, and that is why I pointed out that I can understand why another poster could misinterpret the meaning. You have already said that wording the sentence differently would have prevented any ambiguity, so we are past that. My only real point is simply not to assume everyone will automatically recognise something as too incredulous to be true, especially if it is not worded clearly. It is better to be more careful with one’s words if you do not want them to be misinterpreted. Cheers...

Thank you for the info, but how greatly disappointing it is to hear that. The last three or four days have felt much better on the forum for a change, without all the constant anger, nastiness, and trolling he relentlessly brings to the party. I do wonder what triggered the new account, whether his other account was finally permanently shuttered by the mods or whether he decided to walk away from it after his reputation score turned gravely negative. Either way, it is a disappointing development. And it seems this time he is keen to emphasize in his new username that he is male rather than female, but in my view he/she will always remain confused about his/her gender.

Yes, my understanding is that when he has been fully blocked in the past, he has returned almost immediately with a new username. So far, I have not seen anyone trolling in his usual style, though I am not online that much or watching that closely. As you mentioned, if he does return under a different name, he will probably be easy to recognize. I agree that he is unlikely to stay away for long. He seems to rely on the forum for his human interaction. The only other possibility is that he is dealing with a health issue that is keeping him offline. If that is the case, we may never know what actually happened to him.

The way you wrote the sentence, “I was dating a woman who had a brother murdered in the streets of Bangkok,” could be misunderstood as meaning that she arranged for her brother to be killed. I suspect the other poster was making a sarcastic remark based on that possible interpretation, implying that she was responsible for her brother’s death and joking about wanting to meet her sister. I am not sure whether English is your first language, but your sentence could have been phrased more clearly to prevent confusion. To avoid any misunderstanding, the sentence could have been rewritten as: “I was dating a woman whose brother was murdered in the streets of Bangkok.”

That is an inaccurate comparison. AI is primarily a source of information and an advanced form of data collation. It functions as a powerful learning tool and can carry out meaningful tasks that improve productivity, support research, and assist with problem solving. From education and business to science and healthcare, it has clear and measurable utility. Like any technology, it can be misused, but that does not negate its practical value or the benefits it already provides. Social media, by contrast, is largely designed to capture attention. It often amplifies superficial content, misinformation, and carefully curated images intended to attract clicks rather than inform. While it can connect people, it frequently prioritizes engagement over substance. Equating AI with social media overlooks the fundamental difference between a tool built to enhance capability and platforms optimized primarily for attention consumption and cognitive addiction.

What is actually a bit ironic is that he hasn't logged in since Sunday. I don't think I've ever seen him not log in for a few days. I wonder if his account is fully locked now or if he willingly dropped off. Or maybe he'll login tomorrow. Anything is possible I guess.