Stickman Thai Girl Story Similarities
I came across the Stickman site only when I got to planning my last trip to Thailand. Because I was contemplating a Thai girlfriend and maybe future partner in the LOS, I trawled the internet for information and insights before taking the plunge. Stickmanbangkok.com is certainly the most useful internet resource I came across.
The reader submissions span over 10 years and must include well over a thousand stories. <Approaching, 8,000 articles actually – Stick> I can’t pretend to have read them all and the lack of any search facilities or meaningful story titles makes it difficult and time-consuming to trawl through looking for the relevant reader’s gems (Stick, please note how useful it would be to have some form of in-site search facility).
What I have noticed amongst the hundred or more submissions I have read which deal with the Thai dating scene (for want of a better description) is an extraordinary similarity in the experiences described. Statistically this confounds me – either (i) the website, the people who read it or those who go on to write stories all share the same bias or (ii) in some way the process by which they arrive at forming and expressing their view is itself biased. I will turn later to another possibility, option (iii), later.
Dealing with (i) first of all, I assume that most people find stickmanbangkok.com through a search engine. Maybe they have put something innocuous like “Thai girlfriend” and found a hit (currently number 5 on the Google list) or maybe they have already put some spin on the ball by asking “problems with Thai girls” where Stickman is number 3 in the list or “Thai girl scams” – number 2 or “Thai girl strategies” – number 1. You see my point; it’s possible that the very first articles on the Stickman website which the Google spider then trawled through 10 or 11 years ago to build its search capabilities created a bias which has become self-perpetuating.
One could equally argue that I have chosen some search terms here which, in themselves, have a bias and that is true. Most guys going to a foreign country to try and hook up with a girl ARE going to be worried and WILL form skewed questions which the search engines will do their best to match. I don’t suppose many blokes will ask things like “Thai love advice” or “Finding true love in Thailand” but if they do they won’t find Stickman listed on the first page; they will find dating websites or other sites offering generic advice (but which are often just a front for dating websites). The true value of Stickman is that it is filled with real experiences and those real experiences get optimised by Google the result being that Stickman is more likely to come up when the search term includes such words as girl and scam, cheating or rip-off etc. (I should mention here that many other websites come up on such searches and some of these also deal very well with these subjects although none is as omnipresent as Stickman).
The question is which came first the chicken or the egg? Did some guy have an experience with a Thai girl and then he looked for a website to share his insight using the same skewed search terms that I have already mentioned and then adding yet another story of a similar vein or did he visit the website first, develop his bias and then go out and live (or perhaps thought he was living) the same experiences – in other words the option (ii) which I mentioned earlier.
I could certainly be guilty of the latter option. I did as much research as I possibly could before dating my Thai girl. I asked the right questions, made the necessary checks, took the precautions (except that I stupidly fell in love) and then experienced the doubts, which then seeped into my interpretation of everything that had ever happened with her. In the end, I became convinced that my experience was turning out to be much the same as everybody else’s. But the one thing I was not (and never could be) was –objective. Maybe, just maybe, I myself created the situation I feared – maybe it was an illusion or a delusion.
So what did I do then? Well, I posted my submission Help Needed Understanding A Thai Girlfriend on Stickman’s site on 3rd October
2012 and thus began the process of reinforcing a perception which I think had originally obtained from this website as well as elsewhere. I got further reinforcement from the many emails I received containing similar stories.
I tried hard to convert the purely emotional response I felt after my Thai affair into something more fact-based, more quantifiable and ultimately more justifiable. At this point, I put my Thai girlfriend through a small test documented in Sequel to Help Needed Understanding A Thai Girlfriend
published on 22nd November 2012 at which she failed miserably and which therefore neatly brings me to my option (iii) – is it just that it IS real and that we all keep on having the same collective experiences.
In other words, was I being too deep and too complicated in looking for a bias which is inherent to this website and which skews our perception of reality – or is the reality quite simply what the readers describe. Personally, I am of this latter view but, again, am I being objective? Am I just trying to establish my credentials as an independent, reasoning, intelligent human being and not some intellectually-limited, sheep-like follower of other people’s insights?
I would like to think the former but I am still bugged by the same question I posed at the beginning of this submission. Why are our experiences SO similar – why is there not a little more variety. And here I am not going to give the answer (because I don’t know) but would like throw open the challenge for wiser and more experienced heads than mine, to cogitate.
Before leaving you to reflect on this perhaps I can just throw in few observations of my own as bait to get you biting on the hook:-
Why do ALL Thai girls make the same grammatical errors when using English? Over-use of the present participle, incorrect use of personal pronouns – they get it wrong but they get it consistently wrong – how can that be? Where do they learn so perfectly the incorrect use of English?
Why do they think that 6 months in further education gives them a Master’s degree? Why do they think we should believe it when it is clear from a short conversation that they know very little about hardly anything?
Why do they all say they don’t want “butterfly man” when they are the ones who tempt us from flower to flower – if we weren’t butterflies they wouldn’t be meeting us in the first place. If it’s because they don’t want us pursuing more than one girl at a time then why are they pursuing more than one man at a time?
Why do they all use the same techniques for getting money from us? Me/Mother/Father/Brother/Sister/Auntie needs operation. Mother/Father/Auntie needs new roof or house has burned down. Computer is broken. Mobile phone is lost. Need money for air ticket/visa. Lost money for air ticket/visa/computer etc, etc, etc
It’s a little like this incredible school they go to where they get a Masters degree in just 6 months also teaches them the Thinglish language as well as how to lie, cheat and scam your way through life.
Why do they phone us incessantly? If we don’t answer then we’re not available or we don’t want to talk but they ring again and again and again and send message after message.
Why do they watch soaps on TV and go to beauty shops all the time? Why do they want genuine Lacoste, Polo, Hermes etc when we are happy with the fakes?
If we catch them out on a lie, why do they get angry and start shouting, screaming and hurling things at us and accusing US of not trusting THEM! Why do they prefer to lie even when the truth would be more than adequate? Why do they lie even to each other? Why do the politicians lie to and cheat their own people? And why do the people expect it and tolerate it?
Why are all the girls prepared to have sex with just about any farang, often without condoms and then have babies with absentee fathers? How do they all get to be so f@#$ing good in bed? What is their secret to make us fall in love with them, even after all the warnings?
How did it get like this in Thailand? Was it always like it, going way back to the Vietnam war, WW2 or even further? Why is there so little written history and why is it only Thai’s can teach it in school?
How are things ever going change or is stifling any change the whole point of the exercise?
OK, that’s enough of a starter pack for filling Stick’s columns with your musings while at the same time respecting Stick’s ban on expressing political views.
Stickman's thoughts:
I think a lot of people who contribute stories have got involved with the wrong type of women and seek the thoughts of others. This site provides that opportunity and that's why there is some similarity. But you say you've only read a hundred or so stories which is not much more than 1% – there currently in excess of 7,900 readers' submissions! While, yes, there are a lot of similarities in some stories, there are stories from guys who dated wealthy women, guys who have happy relationships with so-called bad girls and even guys who have sex with or marry ladyboys. So while I take on board the point you make, there is much more variety than you suggest.
