Taco F.

Come to Thailand, drink a serious lot of beer every day so as to kill off any remaining live brain cells and marry a pole dancer who fleeces your bank account and eventually stabs you, at this point you're well on your way to becoming an sexpat superstar. Next, get thrown into jail for doing nothing more than being a really nice mild mannered chap who always minds his own business, is super friendly to everyone and builds stone walls for a hobby, cough cough... congratulations, you just achieved expat stardom.

To elevate to the very highest level... get drunk, ride a motorbike into a pickup truck and spend seven months in hospital. You just became a legend and you also picked up the sympathy vote, there's not much anyone can tell you about Thailand now that you don't already know.

From there on it's all simple, just make sure you're the first to post anything mildly funny or odd about every new post, before anyone else, preferably something that also bashes the BiB and the government. Before you know it every wannabe expat will bow to the mention of your name and journalists will seek you out, anxious to write a profile piece about you, you will be revered as the fountain of not much at all but you will be da man. You may even aspire to the dizzying heights of joining the "mod clan". Forget about that - the posts are filled with ageing nazis clinging on by their spam-spattered fat fingers as they type away furiously posts such as "I've just been busted with a reefer on Koh Tao - what should I do now?" whilst banning any remaining members having half a brain cell.

The reality will continue to be a majority of 7/11 door step sitting Leo swillers. TVF will be full of deep and meaningful posts such as, "can anyone advise on the cheapest bus route between Don Mung and Pattaya Klang or is hitchhiking an option", and "is 400 baht a night possible if I don't have aircon or should I sleep in the airport".

You laugh! Some of those posters will go on to be POTY winners in years to come and when you have finally burnt through the burnt out members the management go and create a fake Yinn profile of a seemingly attractive and feisty Thai woman (an impossibility on TVF) and bait and draw in the ‘marks' or ageing geriatrics whiling away the moments that make up a dull life. And when you finally win, leave the forum for a few days and delete the whole POTY thread.

Poor old Colin (the previous POTY) watching his coveted prize turn into the turd trophy.

They're laughing at you playing you for the old fools you most probably are. Innumerable fake spam accounts by hijacking long dormant often dead members are revived and furiously spew out the usual suspect topics to get the thread started. Often they may be multiple fake mod accounts on a single thread. They are paid on commission per post so every single mod with few exceptions is in on the deception. They need the money - times are hard. And as the number of real users drastically falls away the more numerous the fake troll accounts multiply like flies on $#*! until the only real user on the thread is probably just you, talking to yourself.

Metsidead rules the roost on the US politics thread with Walking Orders/Crazy Alex/Drop Dead Senter and now Damuel Travesty spewing out pro Trump bilge whilst Rimmer runs Loiner on the Brit Brexit threads ensuring the home commentary plastic patriots keep frothing of fascist love for their home country whilst spending their meagre frozen and declining pensions in foreign climes.

You can't win in a pissing competition with the mods - SO DON'T DO IT. Oh the irony, the petty rules, the mini fuehrer's masquerading as fair minded ring masters.

For instance an oldie but goodie thshould run for 50 pages such as - Medical Insurance for Visas

The various threads on TVF regarding medical insurance are both intense, hilarious and frightening, simultaneously. One mod is doing her level best to approach things logically but the sheer weight of angst, frustration and fear is overwhelming... there's a lot at stake for quite a few people. UJ was as fixated as ever on trying to interpret the meaning of words contained in police notices, well this is past tense, that says should not will, that kind of meaningless pseudo intellectual guff.

Somewhere in the proceedings, somebody crafted a clever notice from CM Immi. And posted it, the notice confirmed worst fears that everyone would need to get health insurance. The logical ones and the naysayers were devastated. BBQ was deflated, he'd been in overdrive mode with keyboard diarrhoea and suddenly his sphincter seized up, it was funny to watch. And then the notice was detected as a fake and all posts were deleted, an investigation was launched, the culprit will be banned, a bonus in my book.

But then poster Pib did the sensible thing that nobody else had done, Pib went to CW Immi. And asked the question, will I need medical insurance when I go to renew my 8 year old O-A visa next year... yes came the reply from a middle-ranking officer, as if to prove the point they (Pib and the officer) went to see a senior officer who confirmed... all O-A visa holders will need Thai (not overseas) based health insurance to renew their visa from 31 October onwards. But many of us already knew that was going to be the case the moment this whole story was rolled out, it's the way things work here.

One poster was trying to point out that these new rules only come about because so many scammers and gamers had tried to con every past rule in so many different ways... border runs, ed visa's, language visa's, borrowed/non-existent money, you name it, people have found ways to circumvent them... said posters views weren't well-received, how dare you say suggest such a thing, I'm a fine upstanding well-regarded member of Pattaya's finest beer bars. Funny and sad.

Personally, I was thinking of visiting the former mod SBK in Bangkok at her workplace and asking her why she behaved so reprehensibly and had nothing to say when the mod/murderer in Phuket was caught, or when the duplicity of the former owner was exposed.

I am surprised that this "webfact" fellow is not held accountable by German media. As a German national, Matthias Schoenfeld should be of interest to crusading German papers and they should at the very least be asking him some questions.

Katabeachbum was the guy who chopped up and stored his wife in a drum, a true nut job!

Its all about the annual Xmas card emails.

Years ago...

Hi smokie36
Thanks for your 7000 posts this year which were very welcome.
Whilst we note 4000 of them were nonsense banter and 2250 were on the footy forum which we don't really care about the other 750 where you offered genuine and honest advice based upon your experience were gratefully received.

Cheers george

And this year's email...

Hi smokie36

We've had to close your account as whilst you had made about ******* posts on our forum over the last 9 years we noticed that on 12 separate occasions you had minor infractions of our rules.
That is about 1.3 posts per year which is obviously far too high to allow you to remain a poster on our great site.

Quack quack! Yours sincerely metisdead

Some mods. Develop a personal dislike for individuals and then go on crusades against them, we all seem to have encountered that syndrome. And yes, some mods are not into context whatsoever, every post is standalone and its merits must be judged solely on that post alone, it's yet another indicator of how shallow some really are. To fill in some of the names you mentioned:

Most of the quality posters are no longer present, some left, some passed on, some just simply gave up and who can blame them. The demographics of the site have changed enormously, the site used to be almost exclusively resident expats but now there are huge numbers of wannabe expats, three-week visitors and a whole army of Manchester based bed sit dwellers who are bored out of their respective skulls, the quality of posts has fallen accordingly and may well have dragged the quality of moderation down with it.

I think a lot of resentment towards TVF stems from the olden days when posters were genuinely helpful to each other. I can't begin to recall the number of people with whom I had PM discussions about this or that in respect of them moving to Thailand or trying to solve their Thailand based issues, none of whom wanted to post in open forum for fear of ridicule or trollism. There were others that I met and drove to hospitals to help them understand the processes they had to go through... a lot of hand holding. I don't think for one minute that I was alone in doing those things, I know many people saw the forum as a way of helping other people and got pleasure out of doing so.

So when after all of that, one or two vindictive mods with their own agendas started their campaigns against individuals it was like hey, wait a minute, you really don't get it... and they still don't. To people like Metisdead, being a mod is like being a typesetter, every character has to be in the correct location, everything is black and white and mechanical, which is certainly not what the forum was designed for.

Charlie H, who has in the last year assumed a swollen ego such that he interjects himself without bothering to to think about the context people have posted, instead deleting their comments or suspending them. The praise lavished on UbonJoe is ridiculous. He isn't an expert and sometimes his "advice" is incomplete or inaccurate. Other times it is lifted from comments already published and available online if people look. I suppose he gives hope to those who have no hope.

I remember SBK, who has now done her utmost to distance herself from TVF. I can't blame her as she is associated with some things that don't look too good in retrospect. Anyone remember the highway police volunteer from Kata and mod who chopped up his wife and put her in barrels? Any mention of this results in an instant suspension. Or how about the guy who reportedly ran porn sites that contained some rather vulgar content. :) And then there were the allegations of wrongdoing made about George, one of the initial owners of TVF and his disposal of the website.

The ThaiVisa real estate sales office and Thai Visa cafe in Hua Hin (Now the Busy Bee) quickly disappeared. That story makes for an interesting read. As for the facts, one never knows how much is true or if there was a vendetta against George by someone with connections. Then the sale of the Inspire catalogue to Nation Media. I don't think it is working out as planned because of the change in demographics. (More Chinese and other Asians and fewer English language speakers etc.)

Have a look at the advertising now. Very different than a few years ago. I don't think that the revenue is there, and those infomercials promoting Pattaya condos are late night telly at its finest. They are so enthusiastic over "Pattty - I - Yah" as they call it, as to cause me to think that they live in a different Pattaya than what I know of. Better yet is that current events announcer Jonathan what's his name. His blue screen "newsroom" is brilliantly done however. Every time I see him, I am amazed that he is still alive. His voice and wheezing bring to mind a Marlboro Red 2 pack a day habit.

So anyway, TVF reflects its users and demographic, many of whom are going to have to leave because they can no longer afford to live there. Other quality posters just aren't around, and others have died. When I look back over some of the people that used to post and their sudden disappearance, I am sort of saddened.

The conspiracy claims were plentiful. When a resident drunk died in my ex's building, it was a predictable reaction. He had slipped on the stone floor and severed an artery on his broken alcohol bottle. Being inebriated he just passed out and bled to death. Most residents in the building knew he drank in excess. However, on TVF it was turned into a diabolical murder carried out by ninjas who scaled the building and climbed in through his 10th floor balcony and assassinated him. When mentally ill people take a dive from a Pattaya balcony, there is rarely common sense. Instead of recognizing that the poor soul was mentally ill or had a terminal disease and wanted to end it, there is always a claim of a spectacular murder plot.

I haven't signed in to TVF for some time now, as I just can't handle it. Last week before I left for Songkran, I had a look at the website and the amount of "clickbait" crap was astounding. The use of salacious headlines and expired stories that lead to closed links speak volumes. Anyway, couldn't happen to a more deserving group as I dislike Nation Media and its boosterism of the ruling junta. Bangkok Post had refused to allow TVF to feature articles from it many years ago and now we know why.

My favourite warning from an ex mod.
"You can not call someone an idiot, even when they are"

My own personal favorite's were:
"You are being banned for replying to a post by one of our long term members in a negative fashion."
That pearl of wisdom was courtesy of blackcab.

And not forgetting:

"You are being banned for leaving a sad faced emoji on my previous post."

That was courtesy of the wannabe gangster himself, Mr. Charlie H.

A right pair of big girls blouses. Stuff 'em all!
You did what, you left a sad face emoji on a post! I can tell you my lad that we'll not tolerate that level of hooliganism around here, it's uncivilised.

That would make for a great thread, post your TVF warning notices, just to show how inane the whole thing is and how vindictive the Mods can be, here's one to get us started:

Hi chiang mai,

You have been warned by metisdead for a comment made in a topic, 64 year Dies from Heart Attack after too many Viagras

Reason: Comments - Moderation

Content: 64 year Dies from Heart Attack after too many Viagras

Penalty:

Given 1 points which will never expire.
Restricted from posting - 23 hours and 59 minutes

You are being warned for a post you made in the 64 year Dies from Heart Attack after too many Viagras topic, this is what you posted:

Physiologically impossible I'm sure but good click bait nevertheless.

Making comments such as "good click bait" is considered a comment on moderation and such comments have the potential to derail a topic. You are under no obligation to read any thread and are under even less of an obligation to respond. If you do respond, please respond to the topic of the thread. You have violated this rule:

10) Do not discuss moderation publicly in the open forum; this includes individual actions, and specific or general policies and issues. You may send a PM to a moderator to discuss individual actions or email support (at) thaivisa.com to discuss moderation policy.

You will not block contact with moderators or administrators. Doing so will result in suspension.

Your posting rights are suspended for 24 hours so that you may find the time to re-read the forum rules which can be found here: www.thaivisa.com/forum/terms/

Metisdead

TVF f*cks you up, metisdead and all the rest.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they have
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were f*cked up in their turn
By drunken, bitter bar stool fools,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

TVF hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coral reef.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't make any posts yourself.

//CLOSED//