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I'm a little too young to have used an acoustic coupler modem, you know - like the one Mathew Broderick's character uses in the movie “War Games”. I got my first modem about 23 years ago at the age of about 10 or 11. It was a 300 baud modem but it was enough. Ever since then I've been meeting people "in the flesh" that I'd first met online. It was a bit weird at first - Very few BBS owners would have relished the idea of having a 12 year old kid rocking up to their door wanting to trade games. But as I grew older my social skills improved and so did technology. The mid-late 80s saw a large increase in the number of "underground" boards, you know - piracy, phreaking, hacking, that sort of stuff. I can remember at the time these guys seemed "heavy", lone supermen with massive IQs. After meeting a few shady characters from some of these boards I realized that the majority of their skill sets came from information shared with other members of the scene. Sure, there was a bit of individual inspiration, which added to the body of knowledge but the majority of their knowledge came from their social group. This to me was an inspiration – I had up until then rejected to notion of learning from the group, preferring to try and work it all out for myself. This poisonous attitude had extended to educational institutions, I refused to do homework, attend classes I didn’t like, or deal with teachers I didn’t like - truly one of the worst students imaginable. It was only after seeing the way knowledge acquirement and learning happened in online underground circles that I began to change... it happened slowly, very slowly, but it happened.

In the late 80s my friends and I started using the internet, our usage was mainly confined to university sites. I first acquired personal access to the internet in the early 90s - this was hard as I wasn't a university student at the time. I literally had to do an interview with the guy that was going to provide me with access at a local university. I had to prove I was a nerd!

Anyway, in the mid 90s all these files started popping up with strange file extensions like .html... Before long everyone was online. I met more people and found that I started to live more of my life online. I met many people via ICQ, newsgroups, sites, online societies, online games, etc. In the early days of the web the people that you’d meet offline all seemed to have something in common – they were weird. But they were a different breed from those at the vanguard in the early 80s, both groups were social misfits but the new webbers had a much broader range of interests. Up until the mid 90s people that you’d meet online were almost exclusively computer enthusiasts. Then the late 90s saw a huge explosion in the number of people using the web. A new type of user pervaded the internet - terrifying the semi autistic, socially inept user base that had dominated the medium up till now... They were NORMAL people. These socially adept people started making the net “cool” – they made the bubble and they burst it too. As daunting as it was, meeting normal people was refreshing. You see before the influx of the masses, meeting offline was often a “who’s smarter than who” competition (which I frequently lost). The pressure was finally off in terms of intellectual masturbation.

I moved to Sydney, in 2000 leaving behind my social network in the city I’d lived in for more than twenty years. Apart from the people I met at work the first friends I made in Sydney were almost all met online. Then I met others through these people and my group of friends expanded rapidly. In 2001 I’d organized the first offline meet with a friend who I’d been chatting to for a while. He introduced me to a Thai girl he’d met online. The girl and I hit it off and we were soon an item. This girl was an internet addict, much more so than I. She had a huge list of MSN messenger contacts (her chat tool of choice) and spent a large part of the day chatting. She’d had long term exclusively online relationships with guys half way across the globe, she had hundreds of chat based potential suitors and friends, and had taken the bold step of actually meeting some of them offline. I had some idea of how lonely things could get being in a city where you didn’t know anyone (let alone a country) and I was thoroughly impressed. Over the next 4 years my girlfriend and I ran businesses online, published sites and material online, and met many new people through the web.

Then, in late 2005 it was time to start afresh again. My girlfriend and I decided to move to Bangkok, which brings us to the present. I knew absolutely no-one in Bangkok when I got here so I started meeting people on the internet and then in person. This has been a remarkable experience – unlike any I’ve had in the past 23 years of being online. There is something different about the new people I have met here; they are worldlier than your average online punter. As mostly foreigners to they come from all over the globe and their respective cultures and opinions seem to rub off on each other. Combine this with the fact that they are also immersed in the Thai culture and you get the makings of some truly interesting people.

My experience with Bangkok on the web started with the “Stickman” site. Before I came to BKK I’d already started reading the site and marveling at Stickman’s insights and his detailed advice on what to do in the many new situations foreigners got themselves into here. After I got to BKK I started reading the reader’s submissions on a regular basis. They are a valuable resource for the newbie and also a good source of entertainment. I was so impressed by Stickman’s dedication to providing a free service that I emailed him offering my assistance on his site. One night I decided to Google “Stickman” and see what I got – after several layers of search I found a story bagging the poor guy. I went to the homepage (www.mangosauce.com) and started reading the articles. It turned out to be a very humorous site that gets updated every 2 weeks or so. The guy that writes most of the stories (an enigmatic dude called David) is a damn funny guy. These sites were great but they weren’t helping me to meet people. I eventually found a site called NanaPlaza.com with a popular message board. I started posting on this board and it turned out that the users were a very social lot. They have a book club, organize quiz nights, and a bunch of them meet every Friday – newbs are welcome and if you’re game (and a bit lucky) you may get to go through a not entirely unpleasant “initiation”. So I’ve been out with these guys a number of times now and it’s a nice relief from the pressures of the week.

Another thing is that a lot of the site owners and users know each other. This farang community in BKK is pretty close-knit and there are only seems to be a few degrees of separation between them all. Now this is a good and a bad thing – good because you can get to know the farang community quickly but bad because word of your misdeeds can spread like wildfire. Also, piss off the wrong person and you could potentially be ostracized. But don’t worry, they are an easy going bunch and are pretty hard to annoy. Actually, the hardest part for me is trying to avoid bonking the bar girls. I have a very liberal attitude toward sex and see prostitution as both a necessary and a good thing, but I’ve made a commitment to my girlfriend. Over the years I’ve experimented with various kinds of relationships and I’ve found that in truly open relationships I always lose! So in the interests of maintaining my own sanity I must remain monk like in BKK’s many places of the night. Yes, I’m like a kid in a candy store... the trouble with this candy store is that it has the yummiest candy in the world.

OK, what’s next? Well, the good thing about Bangkok is that everyone seems to want to meet up and hang out. For example - I enquired about a job recently via email and although I didn’t get the job the employer and I got chatting and we are going out for beer soon. This sort of thing seems to happen all the time here and it’s all driven by the internet. As for online activity there are heaps of other boards and lively chat sites to check out (e.g. http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/ and http://www.thaivisa.com/bangkokchat.0.html). More story sites to check out (Like this one - the informative http://www.thailandstories.com/) and I guess I’ll have to do what everyone else is doing and start my own Bangkok related site.

Anyway, the online community in Bangkok is a surprising one. The guys that run these sites are essentially altruistic – as they can’t be making much money off them. They provide an invaluable service to the foreigners that live here or those that are just popping in for a visit. So, with all these great sites Bangkok promises to be a rewarding place to spend the next part of my life online.