This came up today when I decided to leave a particular forum for good based on the attitudes of the people running it. Generally you will find expat forums go along a very narrow pattern which offers very little in a positive insight to life. Doesn’t mean its 100% useless just means you have to spend a lot of time getting the most out of it. The other important thing is nothing seems to develop past the first 12 months of living in the Philippines for some reason as the better members disappear for several reasons.
- Tired of other members on the forum.
- Heavily moderated.
- Bored of the forum and read anything they needed.
- Or simply moved on where the forum has nothing that helps them with their transition to Expat life.
I still go on from time to time purely to see if there is someone that is worth interconnecting with as not being retired I do want to develop social as well as business connections which also means for many that are in the same boat like me we only visit the forums maybe a couple of times a month if that. The downside is that expat forums often miss a wide spectrum of knowledge because a lot of people don’t use them for the reasons above. But it also means you get a lot of experts with opinions who write like they know what they are doing but often have never engaged in business or even local life, a lot hide in condo and mall lifestyles distancing themselves from the real Philippines which is fine. Except when they write about how you should live in the provinces or that its so dangerous you shouldn’t be there even know they lack any knowledge of that type of life. Which is why thought comes into it and to get the most out of forums you will probably find a few people you are on the same wave length and its worth contacting privately instead of open forum. I have seen peoples reputations damaged purely on forum banter and to be honest I will post information that people feed to me as long as its genuine and if interest or use to others. E.g. where to avoid or who at the same time stating the circumstances that happened to bring the event that occurred.
Just part of expat life here and one I have little time for which is why people like myself you will rarely find outside my blogs these days and many of the people I know only use emails as they have completely withdrawn from the expat social groups and forums for various reasons. Not that I mind as I feel I lost nothing as the people I gained around the forum basis I still know and in constant contact with. Information I would have shared on the forums I think have extended as far as they could go as like I said the life seems to be based around 12 months of getting here to settling in. Everything else is in TropicalPenpals.com blog which spans currently 3 years.
Originally posted 2011-03-08 09:37:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
