Bitcoin Forum

http://thailandlandofsmiles.com/2011/03/02/pattaya-jet-ski-scam

Make sure to also read the comments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattaya

Read it ALL!


http://beautifulsceneries.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/pattaya-beach480c.jpg


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Somewhat better. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Phuket+vs+Pattaya

From what I have ascertained after gleaning from the various online sources, I envisioned a Bitcoin conference speaker's presentation after pulling an all-nighter in Pattaya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzAXb7qCCAo (you'll enjoy this clip)


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

I am concerned there is no polite way to discuss why I think Bruce choose Pattaya without
it ending poorly. So I just gave up in the other thread and decided people will have to decide
for themselves.

That did not even cross my mind.

Why are you posting that?

I absolutely love Thailand.  I've spent 6 weeks there, and I am mildly conversation in the Thai Language .  Yet, the one place my girlfriend and I never want to go again, is Pattaya.  We went there because it was close to Bangkok, but it was a huge mistake.  I should say I have nothing against homosexuals at all, but this place was disturbing.  Seeing 50 yr old men walking around in Speedos arms locked with a 15 year old boy, and the countless young boys and girls running around asking for money or making sexual gestures.  The beach seemed to be full of guys wearing speedos getting massages from Thai boys wearing speedos.  

I was looking forward to the BTC conference in Thailand, but I will have second thoughts if Pattaya is the choice location.  There's plenty of other beaches near Bangkok that would be appropriate.  Alternatively, it's a very short plane ride, or a $20 overnight train-ride to get to Chiang Mai, which I think is the best part of Thailand.  It's way in the North where it sometimes actually cools down, and it's even cheaper and the people are even friendlier.  

Hence this poll and post, to discuss the ramifications of hosting a Bitcoin convention in Pattaya, leaving all other issues off the table in this thread. Sure, decades ago, hosting a convention in Las Vegas was not a good idea, being how it had a bad rap. I wonder how many start ups failed because they opted to hold their first convention in Las Vegas. I'm only bringing this issue to the forefront to make sure we're not repeating, or causing, the same mistakes. In this digital age, image is everything. Why fuck up a good thing--Bitcoin--because not enough thought was put into a certain venue. I'll offer up a fictitious analogy to state my case: The first NRA meetup in the woods went well, with 150 members participating, although most of those attending forgot to bring a video camera gun. See how easily mistakes can be made even when planned months in advanced?

The money laundering aspect can easily be done over the internet. Holding a convention in some local wouldn't need to take place to lock any deals. It's more the other overtones concerning Pattaya that have my feathers ruffed, although ML could be an issue as well.


http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?app=downloads&module=display&section=screenshot&id=661  http://www.pattayagogos.com/images/ad_pattaya_one_newspaper.jpg


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

A crime occured in a country??? OH god lock down all the borders and dont ever let anyone go there again!

If people changed their lives based on the actions of the immoral, we would never do anything ever.

I can only assume Mr Wright would never go to such a place because he couldn't handle himself and would be fucking all the children in sight if he went there? Its called self control, use it.  And if you want to be slightly more proactive: if you see someone fucking a child, beat them physically.

Some cities have more crimes than others. We're discussing the image issue. Pattaya seems to be the wrong choice for many reasons, not just crime. NYC could easily be eliminated on the crime issue alone. But NYC doesn't have an image problem when it comes to hosting a convention there. And either does Las Vegas, now, of which, I believe, is the number convention city in the world (correct me if I'm wrong--short on time to confirm).


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Of all the great places in Thailand, Pattaya must be one of the worst choices possible.  It is really shitty (for reasons mentioned in my last post), and I've had locals in other cities there tell me not to go there due to the organized crime elements, among other things.

Seriously, Thailand is a phenomenal country for so many reasons:  there no other country you can go that simultaneously is so inexpensive, yet also relatively safe and has amazing people everywhere you go... except for Pattaya.  I'm sure there's other places that are shady too, but there's no reason to pick any of them.  If the beach is preference Phuket, Ko Phi Phi, or Hua Hin are excellent choices.  Phuket and Hua Hin are at least as easy to access as Pattaya, but without the reputation as child sex havens.

If beach isn't required, I think Chiang Mai should be first choice, which I believe is one of the best cities in the country, especially for tourists.  It's astoundingly cheap, it gets cool at night (unlike the rest of Thailand which is right next to the equator), it's a lot more laid back than the city-scape of Bangkok, and even after spending two weeks there I never met anyone I didn't like (besides other tourists).  There's also an airport for folks to fly into directly, or take an overnight air-conditioned sleeper train from Bangkok for $20 (I love the train). 

The more I read about Bruce and his ideas about what constitutes a good conference, the more I see that Pattaya is the perfect place for Brucecon Bitcon.

I liked Jeff Garzik's suggestion that major financial hubs would be ideal locations for bitcoin conferences.  NY, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Dubai.

I like Trannies.

+1

We need to drive innovation in Bitcoin services though these public events.  We need to exchange information with financial market experts for both their needs and Bitcoins.  We need to reach out to the media in a meaningful way that will also benefit their readers/viewers.

We need a comprehensive plan.  And some have already communicated this basic idea on this forum.

Clearly Pattaya is highly contentious. I see no reason to hold an event there, when so many other fantastic locations exist, both in Thailand (amazing country!) and elsewhere.

A conference is about networking, development, fun, and PR. All parts are important - and Pattaya seems terrible for that forth criteria, and if it is dangerous and super awkward, then it'll be terrible for the third as well.

Bruce - let's rethink the location.

+1

Thank you, evoorhees, for expressing your sentiment so clearly.


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Love Phuket  8)

why not just have it somewhere in Europe? ::)

Is the Bitcoin market dropping because of this Pattaya issue?


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

As your attorney I recommend opening up that main world map of nodes MagicalTux made.
Then find the most highly concentrated area of nodes and put the conference there.

The organizer may have picked the location for the same reason my girlfriend and I picked Pattaya the first time we went to Thailand:  we didn't know any better.  Pattaya is very close to Bangkok, and the bus is like $2.50 each way, making it very attractive for a short trip.

However, I have quite a bit of experience with Thailand (I even speak a little Thai), and I've never met a Thai person who thought positively of Pattaya.  Our experience reflected that.  I just want to make sure that whoever is setting this up is a aware that there's a lot of terrible reputation surrounding Pattaya, and there are so many phenomenal other places in the country that are perfectly suitable.

If you're looking for financial hubs, perhaps Thailand isn't the best.  Though, I don't think Bangkok is a bad choice.  It's a large, bustling city.  But there's also airports in Chiang Mai and Phuket, which are both fantastic locations, so I'd recommend any of those three.

Having spent some time in Thailand myself I'd have to say Pattaya wouldn't be my first choice. I didn't enjoy it at all compared to the rest of the country. Just like anywhere else there's good and bad things about it. It unfortunately does have a bit of a bad rep as well. I'd vote for Chiang Mai and it would be easy to connect flying in. The south is absolutely beautiful as well. Something like Krabi would be amazing but it's a little more off the path and fairly small.

Pattaya has proximity and I would imagine that was the justification.

Jered

Really, the Asian conference should be held in the Yap Islands!

Because...wait for it...it's the home of the very first Bitcoin (prototype). Good call, Piper67.


http://www.visit-micronesia.fm/image/photo_picture/gallery_yap/64.jpg
                                   YapCoin

Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

this is starting to look like BITCOIN CONFERENCE 2012! (the vacation from bitcoin)

All the major stone cutters will be there. We've moved the venue to a bigger hut to accommodate all the leaders of the major tribes from the surrounding islands. Music will be provided by the Lalalalapoluzzla Tribe featuring Bonoo on the quijula. Catering provided by the Slantciec Tribe featuring grubla under palm. All the major news organizations on this planet and four others will be reporting the daily talks. Two, make that 17, major announcements will be made at this gathering. I'm not at liberty to discuss them, but one idea involves plants.


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

tl;dr

Get to the fucking point in the OP. Ladyboys and childsex. Good for bitcoin?

With so many Bitcoin events now planned for next year I think it's inevitable that some will turn out to be mostly about hanging out with other Bitcoiners in fun locations and others will be more agenda driven.  It will be interesting to see what kind of programmes the organisers are able to put together for each event as potential speakers, sponsors, merchants, etc will make their own choices about which events are likely to hold the most value for them.

I agree, but that doesn't mean we can't have both.  There's so many other rewarding places the conference can be held in Thailand.  Pattaya is going to blazing hot, full of lady-boys, gay Russians and child-sex  tourism.  If you're going to pick a country, why not listen to people who've spent a lot of time there for recommendations?

Chiang Mai is cheaper, safer, easier to get to, cool at night, people are friendlier and the less-social folks will have more to do than fighting off lady-boys hitting on them in the streets everywhere they go.  It's really win-win for everyone (unless you're into the child sex thing).

So much for being subtle. Dirty beaches, major crime, and young boys being fucked in the ass. Did I leave anything out?

http://www.boxertravels.com/valentines07/crystal/IMG_9551.jpg

I forgot to add pole dancers. This is the non-Photoshop image. I'm sure the Photoshop version is coming soon.

I also forgot to add a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gb_oWXpkhs


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

I heard of the conference in Thailand, thought good.


Now I hear that it is in Pattaya? Bruce, there is no other way than changing the location!!! !!! !!!


That would be bad PR, a city/beach noone likes... for real... not a good decision... Love thailand, but avoided Pattaya...

I've lived in Thailand more than 8 years. If you want to be surrounded by sex workers and scams then by all means go to Pattaya. A far better choice would be Phuket. It has some of the same but far less, and more discrete. Chiang Mai is good too and more quaint, slower paced.

If you really need to visit Pattaya then at least have the conference in Bangkok and just take the two hour trip down to Pattaya for your kicks. The words "scuz hole" come to mind when I think of Pattaya - not really the image to enhance the Bitcoin image.

I want to lock this thread. And I will lock this thread. On the day Bruce takes Pattaya off the table. On the day he changes it to Bangkok, or any other city, in Thailand.

Love your show, Bruce. Love all you're doing, and done, for Bitcoin. But Pattaya is a mistake. Please reconsider.

Thank you kingly, Bruce.

Sincerely, Bruno


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Despite it's beauty, I'm not convinced that Thailand in general is good choice - but I agree that Pattaya is an appalling one. 

The only good I can see in it is it'll demonstrate what a dumb idea it is using the Thai Baht symbol ฿ for Bitcoin.

I also don't understand the point of multiple conferences in one year.  It dilutes any power that a singular global bitcoin conference might have had.

If the announcement had been instead, something like "2012 Bitcoin Conference to be in Hong Kong"   (or some other major financial hub.. London,Singapore,Tokyo etc)
this would have been more impressive.

Anyway.. nothing to stop some other group of Bitcoiners forming a more focused Conference arrangement to compete with the way OnlyOneTV does things.
That too is 'dilution'.. but hopefully at some point some annual conference can become known as *the* conference. 
Despite what many in the community would like - this doesn't appear to be OnlyOneTV's vision - and if they want to ignore the community's ideas, that's up to them really.

Bruce and co. still do a good job of providing some focus and light on Bitcoin issues - so if people don't like the specifics.. they'll just have to come up with an alternative.

The simple fact that Bruce

1.  Can't see just how bad this idea really is.
2.  Has not responded to the clear problem it presents from a PR perspective
3.  Has not responded to the problem in a timely fashion.
3.  Has not canceled it outright.

Make it all the more clear to me, he needs to take a break, and step back from Bitcoin for a few weeks.  Really he must be either incompetent, or or just plan exhausted (giving him the benefit of the doubt).


I think the simple Poll here says it all-

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39582.0

I live in Thailand for about 4 years now, I would not choose Pattaya as a place to live (I stay on a remote island most of  the time), but when I need to be in Bangkok for some reason - I always stay in Pattaya and travel to Bangkok from there. Bangkok is big, crowded, traffic jams, no air to breathe. Pattaya is a city for foreigners build on a sea side - I would not go swim in that water but anyway the air is fresh from the sea breeze, it's full with hotels and guesthouses for any budget, a lot of good and inexpensive restaurants ran by expats - you can eat pizza made by Italian chief, have some in house brewed beer in a German place and so on, including authentic Russian pelmeni. Usually I'm coming there with my girlfriend but nightlife is fun anyway, unique atmosphere of a never ending party.

Sure there are annoyances, mainly in Walking Street at night, but who cares? If you do not want ladyboys attention, children asking for money in imaginative ways, 'ping pong show' invitation popups before your face, loud noises and so on - just do not go to walking street from about 20:00 to 3:00.

Yes form dusk to dawn Pattaya is filled with prostitutes in lady bars of a different kinds. It's fine with me, some of those places are nice for an evening beer while watching woman live or sports channel on tv.

Yes there are a lot of ladyboys. Yes it's possible to get robbed or scammed, and sure tourist traps are set. Yet I consider Pattaya safe place for those who use common sense.

Alternative locations in SEA? In Thailand, Phuket on the south and Chang Mai on the north both have their own different charms, but it's one more flight from Thailand's main airport, while Pattaya is 2 hours by taxi or bus. In other countries - Hong Kong, a major financial center and still somewhat offshore zone (if anybody is interested - it should be another topic), it's a very interesting and alive city. But it will be i guess about 5 times more expensive than Pattaya for everybody, as living and office space is very expensive there. Singapore is boring, too much rules (like it's illegal to import and chew bubblegum, just as an example), warning sings like 'do not seat here as you may fall' and a likes are everywhere, it's a nanny state at the extreme - not a proper place for bitcoin event IMO. Macau could be a good choice - asian Las Vegas with nice old Portugese architecture, 2 hours by ferry from Hong Kong.

... seems to know a lot more about the world than most ignorant people posting their own personal view of places they seem to know very little about?

Yes, indeed.

http://www.google.com/search?q=pattaya+conferences

I'm quite sure no one was surprised to see that, or felt that it mattered.

(PS: I love Amsterdam as a tourist. I've also been to Amsterdam for conferences. You know what? Those two things have nothing whatsoever to do with eachother)

Until you start hosting nerd-meetings (I refuse to call that 50-or-so meet'ngreet with beers a conference) in amsterdam, because you want to buy some weed there, claiming that it is all for the benefit of a greater good. Then you are abusing that greater good for your own personal gain.

Its nice to see you are so liberal minded. I doubt the business community and average citizens, who we want to get interested, feel the same.


Btw, I think the poll needs a couple more options.

Boy Howdy!
and
Hell No! 

No one cares what you call what.

+1

I love how you think. Believe you, me, Colargol, I get a kick out of adding humor to my polls and posts, but please forgive me, this time, for not changing it because I feel too adamant about this subject. Next time, I WILL take you up on your suggestion(s).


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Just like no one cares how Bruce calls his "holiday with benefits" to a shady place in Thailand. So that figures. ;)

http://www.google.com/search?q=pattaya+conferences

Please let them know. All of them.

I just have to say ...

I'm as gay as they come and I think this is a terrible choice for a Bitcoin conference.

I will, of you start telling all of those that "sex and shady business" is NOT what most people first think when they hear Pattaya: http://www.google.com/search?q=pattaya+child+prostitution

See who's done first...

But I understand that you do not care about bitcoins reputation and only want to join Bruce on his holiday trip. Hard to argue with such intentions.

Call me naïve, or just plain slow, for it was exactly two days ago I thought to myself if there's a direct correlation between a member on this board named Buttcoin and the why he chose that moniker. Reason being, I seem to always wear one of those eye thingies racehorses wear to keep them looking straight ahead. Sexual orientation of a member is the last thing on my mind, although, some may argue, sex is the first thing on my mind. I used to, and sometimes still do, fantasize about going to a foreign land and fucking the shit out of some young girl (remember, this is just a sexual fantasy, and pretty sure I wouldn't do it). That said, I strongly feel that Pattaya and Bitcoin is like Exxon oil and the Yellowstone River: Two great things, but don't mix them together, for if you do, the media will have a heyday with the slightest drop of trouble.

Thank you kindly, wolfaur, for your comment.

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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Weighing the pros and cons, pataya should not be the location.
bitcoin rather needs more serious PR and needs go build credibility.

Credibility being the paramount factor with PR as its keystone. (Is this analogy correct? I just woke up!)



It looks like The_Duke is well armed to do some duke'in.

My brother, Bryan, not my other brother, Bruce (for real), is one of the top players in Mobster II (I think that's the name of the game). He likes to brag how he takes his toon to different cities to fight and earn points/dollars. I think of that when I read the little skirmishes that take place on some of these threads. I somewhat feel it's needed because NASCAR would be boring if there weren't any rivalries--or crashes. Therefore, in case you need to power-up (or what ever the correct gaming term is), The_Duke, I supply you with this: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Pattaya+sex+with+very+young+girls

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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Well. So far you've managed to prove to us all that your knowledge about the world comes from Hollywood :) I agree you would have a hard time arguing successfully about pretty much everything.

Is this also in reference to his name choice--The_Duke--and that Hollywood is often referred to as Babylon?

I'm not picking sides in this, defxor, nor trying to add fuel to both of you. My posts are just my obscure thoughts. That said, I'll now stay on the sidelines and only read.

(image of The Duke not available)

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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Its quite interesting to see that I as a bitcoin critic am trying to actually help bitcoin forward by trying to prevent its image from being even further washed down the drain, while some supposed bitcoin enthusiasts seem all to eager to add child abuse to the list of bad associations with bitcoin.

Oh well, what do I care. Have fun on the kiddycruise! This time it would actually be better if Bruces hyping about media attention completely misses the boat (pun intended). God forbid the media catch on to a bitcoin meeting in a sex resort :')

Hey, the fact that I am right doesn't mean I can't still be a jackass at the same time! :P ;)

I've spent plenty of time in Thailand, have visited Pattaya.

No matter how many write ups you read, it will shock even the hardest core sex fiend into how much of a sex tourist place this is.

Sex tourism exists all over Thailand, Pattaya attracts the worst of them.

Its simply not known for anything else and Im pretty sure if one had been to Pattaya they would be saying that there are better places to hold a bitcoin conference.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39624.msg484698#msg484698

(As to the coordinated posts by The Duke, "Matthew" etc above, sorry guys, well known trolls posting in support of well known trolls just makes what you write all the more ignorable)

I would put 'Inclusivity' way up there as well. That was kinda the point I was trying to make by suggesting those other options for the poll. ( Its okay you don't add them )

I was trying to show how something like this is very polarizing and not something we probably want linked with Bitcoin in the minds of people hearing about it for the first time. Like I may have said before we probably want to be welcoming to 'everybody' and not make it seem like some exclusive club. We should avoid things like elitism and making it seem we are appealing only to this or that fringe group; special interest; sub-culture etc.

Oh wait... I just had a great idea! Lets have our next Bitcoin conference at the Vatican and tie it in with a Pro Choice rally! ( I've always wanted to go to that area for vacation and I hear the Pope will also make an announcement that will rock the Bitcoin world!!! )  ;)   

There is a great expression I have heard in reference to organizational cohesion: "Whatever is not mutual is released."

There are a lot of people here who do not want to see a conference in Pattaya, at least one that may be seen as anything close to an 'official' conference. The question I ask of those who are in favour of it is: Would it be a terribly big deal if there was 'not' a Bitcoin conference in Pattaya?  If your answer is no then lets drop it and move on.  And if you turn that around and ask me, and these others, if it would be a terribly big deal if we did have a Bitcoin conference in Pattaya then I would suggest you haven't been listening to our concerns that have been expressed many times in these threads.

And Dexfor expressing these concerns, even if the person's comments and style of writing rubs you the wrong way, is 'not' trolling. Or would you put me in that category as well? And if so, what is your definition of "trolling"?  "Someone saying something that I disagree with"?

How about we just let this Pattaya idea go? 
 

Posting just to get reactions, of course. The definition of trolling goes back decades.

As far as I see it, besides belonging to the US far religious right there's no reason for anyone to have any opinions on one out of several places for a conference. If you personally don't like the place (I don't) - then don't go.

Oh Come on. Just go up to this post by worldly, to take just one example. This person hasn't just done some search on "conferences in Pattaya" but has actually been there.



This is the type of post that only a right wing fundie could make?
You don't mind seeing Bitcoin being tied to something like this in the mind of average people who know little about Bitcoin?
Do you want to promote Bitcoin?
It seems you are being unreasonable and my last question is:
Are you not the one being a troll here?

It seems to me you are posting just to get a reaction and not even considering how Pattaya could possibly, even just remotely,
be a poor choice for a Bitcoin Conference. How anyone cannot see that is beyond me.. and quite possibly be acting like a troll.

Can you find the other posts from people who live in Thailand and who say it's no major issue and it's a good place due to the communications anyway yourself?


All places can be "remotely" bad choices. When people started to object it was Amsterdam. "It's all just sex and drugs!!!11". To a European, that's simply a joke. The same people continuing to object to Pattaya doesn't make the argument stronger.

If Pattaya is such an obviously bad place for a conference, why is one of Thailand's biggest and most modern conference centres there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattaya_Exhibition_and_Convention_Hall

All this argument about Pattaya & Amsterdam...    my question is why has the concept of an annual bitcoin conference been fragmented like this anyway???

I'd really like to hear Bruce's reasoning on this. I think a single world bitcoin expo/conference would have much more impact in terms of PR opportunities as well as efficiency for Bitcoin startups looking to spruik their offerings.

Yes I have been following all these threads.

Are these the only people we want to appeal to? Have you not seen all the posts by people who feel it is a very bad idea... does it matter they might not have a clear idea on what the place is really like? Are you more interested in getting people interested in Pattaya or in promoting Bitcoin?

Please tell us dexfor. Why is a Pattaya Bitcoin conference so important to you?

I think we know why Bruce Wagner wants a conference there, but why do you seem so adamant a Bitcoin conference takes place in that particular location?

It isn't and I have no interest whatsoever in visiting Pattaya. I just dislike ignorance, and "many people are ignorant" is not a good argument :)

(I will go to the conference in Amsterdam though, since I go to conferences there regularly anyway)

So basically what you are saying is that people are ignorant if they are worried a bitcoin conference in a world wide known
sexual tourist destination might be a bad idea?

No, I'm saying they're ignorant because they claim Amsterdam is only known for drugs & sex, Pattaya is only known for child prostitution, New York is only known for drug related gang wars, San Francisco is only known as a great place to meet friendly bums, Moscow is only known as the place where former KGB agents assassinate journalists etc.

Feel free to answer the question I wrote to you earlier:

"Maybe" is not a good argument. Why should your "maybe" be of significance?

Hey look, in 2009 that same conference center had an expo called "MONEY EXPO Pattaya 2009" - by Thailand's first bank. Must be a really bad place for conferences, especially about money.

Every major city has conference center or centers and Pattaya having one or more is hardly surprising. It is a straw man argument.
Since Pattaya has conference centers it must be a good choice for a convention, thus my point has been made. It clearly ignores
that the debate is about the location being a sex tourist destination with a world wide reputation and attaching bitcoin's image to it.
For one person to do that without considering the possible repercussions was short sighted.

As for Amsterdam, by itself it is a pretty darn good choice, but then this thread is not about Amsterdam being an image problem for
Bitcoin.

If that was true (and it's also a straw man btw), can you point me to where those organizations that have had conferences in Pattaya has had a sex tourist destination image attached to their reputation?

I'll start by claiming you won't be able to.



edit: Ah, I did remember correctly. You were indeed one of the persons who claimed Amsterdam was a bad choice due to it "being known for weed".


That's what ignorance looks like.

Exactly that.

This thread, like most of the threads in this forum, has become overrun by 98% 13-year-old children who are making a concerted trolling attack on the Bitcoin Forums.   Don't fall for it.   That's all they are.... just children trolling for jollies.   Like kids playing telephone pranks.

It is very sad that it is destroying the Bitcoin Community's central point of communication.    Oh for the "old days" when adults discussed topics relevant to bitcoin... with other adults... here in these forums.

Sadly, a certain percentage of real people will come here and read these posts and believe that they are posted by other real people...  And they will begin to believe that there is some percentage of people who believe a certain way...   When, in fact, the entire thread.... and the entire forum... is being "social engineered" by a bunch of 13-year-old kids.

For anyone's information, Thailand is extremely strict about child abuse.   Mess around with anyone under 18 and you are SURE to find yourself in a Thai prison for life.    In New York City ( the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut ), the legal age of consent is 17.   In Thailand, the age is 18.    And EVERYONE checks... in three ways.    So if anyone is thinking about going to Thailand for child-sex....  You'd better think again!     It's not going to happen there without severe consequences.

Also, Be Warned:  Thailand is extremely harsh on illegal drugs.   The smallest amount of an illegal substance brought into Thailand WILL result in the death penalty.   Make no mistake about it.

If you are looking for these things, Thailand is NOT the place for you.

Don't be misled by the false information being posted by 13-year-old kids trolling for laughs here.

Also, as we already announced.....   We are working on Bitcoin Conferences in ALL of the following cities: 

• Dubai
• Pattaya
• Sydney
• San Jose
• Mumbai
• Warsaw
• Moscow
• Seoul
• Rio de Janeiro
• New York City
• Shenzhen
• London

I believe that "The Big Conference" will be the one held in New York City each year.

Obviously, everyone can pick and choose which cities they would like to attend.  If you don't care for one of the cities on the list, please do not attend that one.

On another topic, the current state of this Forum has made it almost useless.... with the children who are all about vandalizing the forum with viscous comments and attacking everyone.   I am considering starting my own Forum --- separate from this one --- for adults only.   I don't really have time to moderate a Forum, but I will hire someone to do so if I need to.   We need a Forum for open adult discussion.

Would you consider using a different terminology then?  e.g strictly refer to this as the bitcoin world 'expo' ?

I really think you've 'diluted' the conference idea by having so many locations.. but different terminology might help raise the status of the main one.

Then I would suggest you sir have no business in arguing for a Bitcoin conference in Pattaya. You clearly are not even interested in promoting Bitcoin. You just seem to want to score some debate points on a subject that has nothing to do with Bitcoin itself.

I am done with talking with you about this. 

Agreed - and that's basically what I asked SgtSpike if bitcoinforums.net would do or not: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37801.0

I'm fully in favor of relaxed moderation, but there's obviously concerted trolling going on here where it's not about expressing opinions anymore.

(I don't believe it's about young or adult though. Just ignorance)


I would expect so, since you're unable to back up your argument :)

To address the second part of your post. When I realized why he choose Pattaya it made me to begin to question why
he choose Amsterdam. Putting them both together is why i was skeptical. That about sums that up.

And you do realize other people can read your posts and come to the conclusion you like to be argumentative, a show off,
and otherwise put people down because you think you are smarter then them. I was reading a different thread today and
thought, "gee, he is an ass", but I will not let that change how I attempt to debate this topic with him.

Yes, that is how I debate trolls. If you want serious discussions I suggest you try to base your arguments on facts and not opinions - and I'll treat your posts differently.

Really. You include me in that too do you?

I am over 50 years old, and I believe I and many others here have expressed our concerns maturely and logically.
Will you care to respond to them in kind rather than childishly calling us names?

Start by giving us a good reason for choosing Pattaya, given its reputation among many who we don't want to turn off and turn away from Bitcoin.
You do want to get ordinary people interested don't you?

It seems you are fast losing any credibility as a Bitcoin spokesman. Will you please address our concerns?  

P.E.A.C.H. is the acronym for PATTAYA EXHIBITION AND CONVENTION HALL. It's probably a given the acronym was carefully picked by marketers to reflect its local environment. Seating capacity is only 8,000, therefore not enough space to hold next year's conference since, by then, Bitcoin will have grown by leaps and bounds. I can foresee the ill news now about how not enough thought was given when deciding to hold a World Conference and Expo at such a small venue. A lot of Bitcoiners will become highly upset when they realize that they won't be able to attend the Bitcoin conference in Pattaya due to it being sold out.

Ergo, Pattaya is a now a bad idea on two counts: Location, location, location and size matters.

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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YOU GOT TO BE MOTHER FUCKIN' KIDDING ME!!! (forgive me folks--it takes a hell of a lot to get be pissed)

That is how an adult handles a hot topic? On this, and several other threads, most have stated how Pattaya is a bad idea. I, for one, have asked you to come here and offer up your professional insight on how Pattaya is a good idea because maybe we excluded something. I smiled when I first saw your avatar knowing damn well you did just that. Blood starting shooting out of my dick (and eye balls) when I read the first line (quoted). I had to reread the rest of your posts for the first time through I wasn't thinking properly.

You must honestly believe that 98% of the writers on this thread are 13-year-old children, otherwise you wouldn't have wrote it, for you're an intelligent man. Now, you look like a kid who's ready to pick up his bat and ball and go home start a new forum for only adults. All this from a man I look up to, read his posts, watch his videos, pay attention to who advertises on OnlyOneTV, etc. It's comments like that that could lose your credibility and viewership.

Quick poll: Participate by quoting this post and stating your age (approximately will be fine, but be honest) -- I'm 51 Years Old.

Don't ever mistake the vocal minority for a majority.

How surprising, more ignorance.

Stupid me! Thanks, defxor.

And people wonder why most old timers just switch on their mental killfile on here...

So, I was catching up with Twitter and I noticed that someone entirely unrelated to Bitcoin had linked this Wikileaked cable about Pattaya (http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=05BANGKOK7242). Makes for very interesting reading, between the police corruption and murder of a reporter that covered it, the sex trade, the deaths of American citizens, etc...

It's 13-year-olds like you, makomk, that make me sick to my stomach with your posts such as this. I can't believe I'm even quoting it. I'm going to start my own Bitcoin forum for 15-18 y/o boys who'll love Bitcoin as much as I do. In 2 years, you'll be welcome to join, provided, of course, you're bigger mature by then.

Sometimes satire is the highest truth. (I found that phrase via Google)

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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Thank you, Bruce. I look forward to viewing them. I haven't check, but make sure to supply the same text to the other threads. Thanks, again.

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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Btw, isn't it the same group, The Cypherpunks, that are behind such things as pgp and bittorrent etc., who are the same people who are behind wikileaks and Bitcoin?  

I remember back in the late 90's ( edit/ late 80s I meant ) checking out everything they were up to, with the re-mailers and pgp and all the rest... before there was even this new fangled thing called the World Wide Web.  Or maybe I am just a child who happened to hear about that stuff back before I was born.  

But anyway maybe this is their way of trying to point out how a Bitcoin conference in Pattaya is such a friggin bad idea, and this self-appointed spokesman for Bitcoin is becoming a liability.  Or maybe it is a hoax perpetrated by a bunch of children.  

The fact that over 3/4 of the readers of this thread voted "no" should've been enough for Bruce to rethink this whole idea.  Let him and his followers leave to where they can moderate out all disagreement in their own private forum.  

Bruce knows Pattaya from first hand experience as he has been there. And it seems that Bruce knows all parts of town. A few seconds using google gave me http://thaiboys.net/guidebook/index.php?venue=thaiboy.net&id_tha=1104&last=6703 (http://thaiboys.net/guidebook/index.php?venue=thaiboy.net&id_tha=1104&last=6703) where Bruce writes about http://www.boyztown-pattaya.com/ (http://www.boyztown-pattaya.com/). So we can be sure that Bruce has a full picture of Pattaya.
And we know Bruce wants to go there. I am sure that Bruce also knows that some bad press can happen from the Pattaya-Bitcoin link. I mean he runs some media business, so he has to know this himself.

The question is can we trust him that he can keep apart his personal desire from what is good for bitcoin?

John Gilmore?    Very, very interesting!

This: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/events-marketing/MAR_ADP_EVM/294079-170718

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Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

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I think at the very least he be asked to change the name of his online show from "The Bitcoin Show" to something that doesn't suggest he is some kind of official spokesman for Bitcoin, just as he should use appropriate labels for these "conferences" he is organizing. 

Two seconds with Google would be the average time needed to disprove that hypothesis.

Maybe if you spend more than two seconds you might find something like this:

Making Money - Gavin Andresen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f3E_jddoq0

( I already saw it before which is why I remember the cypherpunk reference. )
Where Gavin talks about Satoshi being "definitely inspired by The Cypherpunks." Who knows if Satoshi was directed linked to them or just inspired. They are of course of a common mind it seems to me. 

Btw, did your google searches find that wikileak thing just recently posted? 

Does that change your mind in any way? 

No, I didn't think it would.

Run away little troll. Run away. 

Or stay and keep trying to disrupt things. You're choice. 

After listening to this song I'm all in! :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQjmLaqUmn4

Oh and "cypherpunk" is an ideology, not a fixed group of people or an asssociation.

Yes. So is everyone else who got into computers in that era. Myself included.

That "the same" group would be behind the completely different projects you listed isn't any more plausable though, especially since we know the identities of everyone except Satoshi.

Yes!   

vs


makes no sense.

Anyway, since you wanted to talk about the wikileaks cable. Did you read it?


For comparison: First time I stayed in San Francisco (Marriott next to the Moscone center) the hotel concierge drew a line on the map, touching the hotel location, saying "don't cross this line after dark".


Anyways. I have a book suggestion for you. Neuromancer, by Gibson. Cypherpunk (most definitely not a group) was coined much later, but is partly based on that world view.

Yes I did and like I said I am not surprised you would find support for your own views in it, even though it overall just confirms what a bad choice that place is for a conference, which would promote Bitcoin in the public mind, as opposed to some other kind of conference.


I have read most if not all of Gibson's books as well as Neal Stephenson's books and many other "cyberpunk" authors. And as I said I am fairly familiar with the "Cypherpunks" although I don't know the names of all who choose to call themselves that.  And it is so unusual to call people sharing a similar ideology a group isn't it? In any case I don't see how it changes the theory I pondered in any way.  It's just something I found interesting. Nothing to argue about is it? But then you just like being argumentative don't you? Disagreeing solely for the sake of showing you are smarter than another or something.  You are really helpful to this Bitcoin community aren't you? 

*sigh*

From what I can see there are still no comments on how the above can be true yet Thailand's biggest financial institution and first official bank held an expo on money there in 2009.

But why discuss something that would be relevant?

If you can't see the difference between traditional banks and the well established, status quo, of current monetary systems and what they would be wanting to do at a conference and this new Bitcoin stuff and what we would/should (imo) want to be doing with Bitcoin conferences then I can't help you... sorry. 

I started this thread to hopefully discuss Pattaya as being a bad choice as far as the betterment for Bitcoin is concerned. That was all! It may have proved to be the tipping point for Bruce to remove his avatar and declare his leaving of this forum to start up two new Bitcoin forums.

Upon seeing a Bitcoin leader act this why:

If I were an investor in Bitcoin, I would now sell, sell, sell.
If I were a troll, I would say, "Good."

But, I'm neither. All I have to say is, "This sucks!"

Anybody now reading this from the outside who's considering Bitcoin is saying to themselves, "What a bunch of Yo-Yos."

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSkvRZcay8Vbam3gO2Pkqt20uObqCnuVJl4n4DtWUfQPaqCgCG2

Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.”

Ayn Rand

Hmmm.... Unbiased disagreement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Thailand#Child_prostitution) disagrees.




Yeah, like a Thai resort with an "anything goes" attitude! If your goal is to increase bitcoin's negative stigma, congrats.

I'm now wondering if I interrupted a man's holiday plans.

Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

The public mass that we are trying to reach has never even heard of thailands first bank. So when they hear "bitcoin in pattaya" they will not think "wow, bitcoin ... money... big bank... financial prowess".
The public mass knows pattaya for different things and they will think "omfg, bitcoin... pedophiles... child prostition" and couple it to the bad image of drugs and money laundering it already has now. You need to realise that in the public opinion what is truth and what is perceived truth are two very different things. You can look at it as we do to anything Brace Wagner says. We know it comes out of his mouth, but we understand that only 2% of it is... actually... true ;)

You know, it took me a while to actually figure out what my real problem with all of this was. But now that I have figured it out? I'm going to lay it out in detail.

I have some very serious issues with Bruce trying to style himself as the big loud public voice of Bitcoin.

Now, the vast majority of the time, I'd consider my sexuality to be completely irrelevant in any sort of online discussion. However, in light of Bruce labeling the forum users as "overrun by 98% 13-year-old children" and me suspecting he may have persecution issues because of that, I'm going to head this right off at the pass and eliminate any chance I get lumped as a "child" because of some thought that I'm only "trolling" because I'm a homophobe or something.

When I first saw the Bitcoin show, one of my first impressions? Hey, Bruce is pretty cute. Nice calves, by the way. Yeah, I'm a leg guy. Shame I couldn't see higher than I could in the video. I'd describe some of the outfits I wouldn't mind seeing you wear, actually, but I fear if I actually get going I'm gonna get banned from the forum... I do have a pretty dirty mind when it comes right down to it.

Not, however, so dirty that I look at Pattaya as a conference location and don't have a fair bit of trepidation. I wouldn't want to go there. I've known people who have gone there, including an ex-boyfriend of mine. The kind of stuff we did behind locked doors? The fact Pattaya made him uncomfortable means I ain't going there.

All of which is besides the point entirely. Who gets turned on by what isn't even the issue. The issue is that Pattaya has a reputation that makes a great many people uncomfortable. The issue is that Pattaya is making some of your actual potential audience uncomfortable. I honestly don't care what you or anyone else does there: you cannot demand that everyone else be comfortable.

Your thinking that you can be the voice of Bitcoin, while ignoring the concerns of a large number of bitcoin users actually commenting on the subject, is pretty arrogant. It's also, sadly, about what we've come to expect from you when it comes right down to it.

There's another thread opened about collecting ten thousand dollars worth of Bitcoins to hold in escrow so that it can be donated to a charity if they agree to accept Bitcoin. Guess who's going to escrow them? Oh, that's right. Bruce Wagner was volunteered for that.

On the one hand, I think the very notion of trusting someone who lost 25,000 bitcoins to the mybitcoin fiasco is pretty stupid. On the other hand...

Hey, Bruce, pull your head out of what going by the rest of you I'm assuming is a pretty nice butt.

If a bunch of "13-year-old children" are concerned about a Bitcoin association with Pattaya, what do you think the United Way would think of it? Do you think they're going to want Bitcoins if that's the public association?

So we have a Bitcoin spokesman who on the one hand cannot figure out how to secure a Bitcoin, and on the other hand clearly thinks he's smarter than ... um, well, I guess I'm a 13 year old because I think the idea of Pattaya as a conference location is a bad one.

I guess at least one thirteen year old knows how to secure a wallet and didn't lose all his coins (or, in fact, any of his coins ever) then. :)

(Oh, by the way, Bruce, I'm just going by visuals here, but I'm pretty sure I'm older than you are...)

Then there's the fact that, well... I watched the bitcoin show Bruce does. It was the one where he was interviewing MagicalTux about the Mt.Gox hack. I'm sitting there on IRC trying to pose a bunch of questions. A whole bunch of people at one point were copy-pasting one of my questions over and over, because I apparently asked something everyone wanted to know. Bruce, of course, tried to evade the question -- guess he didn't want to lose a sponsor. Come to think of it, I recall a ton of public calls asking him to stop endorsing mybitcoin at the early signs of trouble...

And then there's the last Bitcoin conference Bruce played a big part of. I seem to recall a lot of public commentary about what a letdown that was, that nothing came out of it in terms of information and the like... Now, as I understand it there were some mitigating circumstances, but...

Bruce? You remind me of my first boyfriend. Cute, eager to be the center of attention, and didn't know what the hell he was doing. Start listening to your partners, which in this case is the entire bitcoin community, or we're all going to end up with a figurative scar just like the one I still have on my, well.

No, not there, but you know what I mean. That is, at least, if you actually stopped to consider any of this instead of just assuming that if I don't agree with you, I'm a 13 year old troll who is obviously wrong.

Everyone else? Let's just keep our eyes open for a spokesman who understands the technology he or she is talking about, instead of losing his coins and those of many of his friends and audience because it was easier to trust an unknown party than figure out backing up a wallet.dat ...

As I said above, I've lived in Thailand for more than 8 years. And I'm not 13... I'm almost 50 now and retired. And I certainly don't base my idea of Pattaya off Hollywood movies. They may hold conferences there sometimes but it's certainly not a top conference spot and the post above that lists some conferences that happened isn't very encouraging either judging from the slim list of past ones held there.

Anyone pushing for holding the conference there must have some other agenda because it's very obviously not based on what's best or most suitable for the Bitcoin image.

I recall now a few years back when I lived near Hua Hin. There was two Russian girls who got shot dead on the beach apparently related to some hit or mafia involvement. Most of the stuff that goes on there doesn't even make the news due to corruption. Yech.

I'm a keen BitCoiner and miner too.
And still I feel this way a lot when reading the forum posts here.
BitCoin is a great idea that right now is being held back by lack of cohesion and by Yo-Yos.
Which reminds me that there is a reason why large corporations control the world...

A number of countries including my own introduced laws enabling them to prosecute their citizens for sexual offences against children committed abroad precisely because sexual tourism to countries where child prostitution is endemic and the local authorities either turn a blind eye to or are actively involved in the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Perhaps Bruce was so dazzled by the limo service provided by the hotel (something which is pretty standard throughout SE Asia and not unusual elsewhere either) that he was blind to everything else around him in Pattaya when he visited.  Given how impressed he seems to be that food and alcohol will be provided on the "world cruise", I wonder what he'll fail to notice going on around him on that adventure.

I would like to hear from Bruce *why* he wants to go to Pattaya so badly. There must be some reason that is not bitcoin related. That wouldn't be such a big deal if he just shared the reason with us. If there was no such reason, then I'm sure he would have said:

"Ok fine, if so many people seem to get upset over Pattaya as a location, then lets pick CityX in Thailand, what do I care."

But he doesn't. Rather than just listing to the arguments he stubbornly defends Pattaya. There's a motive behind that, so come on Bruce, let's hear it. What personal motive do you have for Pattaya as a location?

He's already declared that he's not posting here any more and the new forum he set up earlier today only lasted a few hours.  Unless he makes an OnlyOneTV episode about the whole Pattaya controversy, I doubt he's going to be doing any explaining.

I think I just asked him. On this forum.
I fail to see how all of us emailing him would help him being less busy?


Please feel free to help Bruce with the immense stress of being so busy he cannot post publicly anymore and share his response with us.


Maybe his ego does, but for the rest I've not seem him do anything that would really require a team working for him.

That right there is the whole problem.

The self-appointed voice of Bitcoin is a child who gets pissed as soon as someone doesn't agree with him and proceeds to insult everyone arbitrarily. Thirteen year olds, I believe it was, that we have all now been labeled as.

He isn't losing faith in the forum, he's just unwilling to show up now that it's gotten enough users that there are multiple voices that don't agree with him.

The excuse about him being "too busy" to ignore the largest collection of users I am aware of for the project he's supposedly busy with is pretty asinine too. I mean, seriously...

If the top-ranking executive officer of Goldman-Sachs said "Oh, I'm too busy to look at any of today's economic news, I haven't read a stock report in two years, and I don't even know if they still trade silver or coal" they'd lose a hell of a lot of customers and prestige, I would think.

And frankly, the "he's busy" response is a crock of shit anyway. He had the time to insult everyone posting in this thread... along with saying very little about the fact some people were uncomfortable. He tried to, well, dispel the myths -- and completely ignored the obvious fact that most of us are more worried about public perception. Unless he thinks his post here is being printed in newspapers around the country, his entire post was about insulting us, and then trying to claim we were wrong -- about the wrong thing.

There's still not a single tangible fact to back up those worries posted in this thread. I can only assume a lot of people aren't used to having to base their opinions on facts.

Anyone can claim anything. It's how you support your claims that makes a difference. Trolls cannot usually back up their claims.

I was referring to much of the commentary in this thread itself, not saying "most of the community." Local reference, not global.

Some of the posts in this thread had specifically stated concern about Pattaya's reputation being associated with Bitcoin if a conference is held there. And honestly, even if that's the minority view...

Minority viewpoints are equally entitled to recognition and consideration. If one in 100 people worry about whether hosting a Bitcoin conference in a place that has a reputation for child prostitution and other things that make many average people squeamish, hell, if one in a thousand worry about that...

No, I am not trolling. I mean, seriously. I became a grown man multiple decades ago and my mother still warns me that I'd better be careful on the internet because "that's how people get raped." Considering that my mother isn't even close to the only person I know with that kind of paranoia, yes, I do wonder how I could explain Bitcoin to some of the people I know if we see "Currency conference marred by child sex scandal" or anything like that in even a minor newspaper or online news aggregator.

I live in a very conservative area -- one which happens to have a pretty large number of financial businesses. I worked in that industry for a few years. If Bitcoin started becoming practical I actually still have many connections in this area and could probably get several businesses to seriously consider accepting Bitcoins. Except for one problem: When I say "conservative area", I mean very. I'm the only gay person in my entire neighborhood. I'm the only person on this block who does not have three or more children. A few minutes ago I sent a PM to someone wanting to pay for some printing work, with bitcoins. I can probably actually arrange that with a local printer, the guy was a former client of my last employer, and personally owes me some huge favors right now.

The guy is also the director of his local church.

So, what it boils down to right now? I'm aware of a specific business I have a very good chance of getting to accept Bitcoins, which is what poster after poster after poster is claiming we need, businesses accepting Bitcoins, merchants letting us spend them.

I even know of a heavy user in this forum who wanted that service for Bitcoin enough to publicly ask about it.

And I know how conservative and religious and church-affiliated the business is. As a result, I have good reason to believe that if I could get him to take bitcoins, he would drop Bitcoin like a hot chunk of uranium if he thought his neighbors and religious clients thought the currency was used for child prostitution. And while were at it, let's be blunt, lots of these people aren't exactly great about getting their facts right before they pour out the "OH GOD YOU PERVERT" stuff, so the fact that "conference held in area where this has happened in the past" is not the same as "conference was about using this money for THAT" is pretty irrelevant...

I'm always willing to try my best to give someone a fair and honest chance, so I will try that tomorrow. Though in all honesty... I do have to say, it does tend to get me on edge that the first post I made on this thread, I was trying quite hard to be direct and honest, I wasn't trying to insult someone, I stated (and honestly, I think I stated it in a pretty unprovocative way) what my concern was...

And the first thing I see from Bruce answering it is "This thread, like most of the threads in this forum, has become overrun by 98% 13-year-old children who are making a concerted trolling attack on the Bitcoin Forums." I don't think I misunderstood that at all, I don't actually see how I can construe that as referring to the members of another forum. "It is very sad that it is destroying the Bitcoin Community's central point of communication.    Oh for the "old days" when adults discussed topics relevant to bitcoin... with other adults... here in these forums."

That is not a misunderstanding. He referred to the posters on this thread. Repeatedly and directly. Along with the posters on this forum in general. Directly. (Also, I have no idea how the conclusion he's referring to members of another forum can be drawn there at all.)

So, yes, tomorrow I will try contacting him more directly and trying to tell him exactly what it is that I, personally, find troubling about the proposed location. But, no, I am not jumping to conclusions, or misunderstanding, about the fact that there were things said in this thread that I think were obviously not intended to troll, and Bruce just jumped on the tired old "poor me" definition of

troll, n. Person who dares to not agree with me in public.

If you've guessed that I find the application of the T-word for that use to be offensive, you've guessed correctly. I suppose it's entirely possible he's misinterpreted some, or lumped the behavior of some trolls in with everyone, but to be honest, in either case then he's jumping to conclusions just as much as you seem to be accusing me of.

It's not a matter of opinion that Pattaya has a poor reputation. Everyone in this country KNOWS it as a center for the sex industry and other illegal activities. If you don't know that then you plainly have no idea what you're talking about. The question is whether Bitcoins need to be making headlines holding a conference there. I'd vote no.

I can understand that. We have a similar problem on another place I hang out online -- people will frequently bypass ignore settings and administrative cease-contact orders by just making new accounts with a new anonymous e-mail address. At one point some truly pathetic moron who clearly had nothing better to do had amassed more than three hundred logins, all used at least four times a week. I was one of the tech staff the administrators suckered into spending three weeks going through system logs to help them find all those accounts to ban them. :/

Like it or not, I think you are right.
So what can we do? We know Bruce wont listen to the community. But I think he will listen to the sponsors. So I say tell the tradehills, mtgoxes, memorydealers that Pattaya is a bad choice, I think they will listen and can eventually convince Bruce to move to a different city.

While the above might be a valid reflection for some who are based in US culture, as a European I see no reason whatsoever to include such opinions in what and where I would ever hold or travel to a conference.


Reading through your posts on this forum, and how very little facts you seem to base them on, I see no reason for anyone to listen to your opinion on what the "public mass" think or does not think about anything.

As far as I can see, there's a lot of "I think" and "My opinion" in this thread - from the naysayers. The only facts being posted do not support their world views.

No, but it's a matter of opinion that Pattaya's unrelated industries would rub off on conferences held there. If you want to claim it does, I suggest you take any one industry or company that has held an event in a Pattaya conference center and show how that has negatively impacted their reputation.

If you cannot do that, your opinion is not based in fact. It is really that simple.

As I've posted earlier:


Not to mention Las Vegas. Omg. How could anyone ever think of placing an event like CES there - especially with the Adult Entertainment Expo just next door?

Now. If Pattaya was the ONLY place Bruce suggested there should be a Bitcoin conference, I would probably agree slightly more. Seeing the absolute onslaught of trolls attacking first Amsterdam (really) and then Pattaya as if that's more important than how great all the other locations are is basically proof this is more about trolling and personal attacks on Bruce than anything else.

I find that quite lame.

Wow, even more defending of holding a bitcoin meeting in a shady place, while it could just as easy be held in any other place without a bad reputation. The people who so badly want this meeting to be in Pattaya have other motives than just bitcoin to do so. I can't help but wonder what they are...

Feel free to voice your concerns, and please be more specific about what those concerns are and who you include in "the people". As to "any other place" I can only assume you're unable to reflect upon the fact that we're discussing but one of the many places conferences are planned to be held.

No, it's not ego. Just like the million other times someone tried to give Bruce honest and helpful and advice and he rejected it all out of hand because it wasn't optimistic enough for him.

When people accuse him of only wanting to go to Pattaya to screw boys and then someone posts his enthusiastic review of a place in Pattaya where you can go screw boys, he's pretty much ceded the benefit of doubt on that issue. At the very least, it creates enough doubt that if he's got some big awesome legitimate reason for his Pattaya fever, it would probably be best (even if just for his own image) to share that reason with the community. Instead, he throws a tantrum, starts his own forum and then deletes it 3 hours later?

I don't know. I look at this thread and I don't see "98% trolls", I see a lot of people with some very heated concerns and pointed observations, and I see Bruce hiking up his pants and taking a crap on those people just like he does with anyone who's the least bit negative about anything. Apparently Bruce is the only person who's allowed to show any kind of emotion or have any kind of honest opinion about anything, and if you disagree, you couldn't possibly really think that and must be screwing with him. It's such a childish and myopic worldview, and when you combine that with the tantrums and the taking-my-ball-and-going-home act, it makes it especially galling to watch him repeatedly accuse everyone else of being a child.

<----  +42 this is the way to go.

What really goes down in Pattaya:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoneogHmZOI

Too busy doing what exactly? He rarely does the Bitcoin show anymore - if at all - and his TV "network" is a disjointed mess of broken promises, unrealistic goals, poor judgement & leadership and over-hyped pipe dreams.

Thanks for your words wolftaur.


While it would good, and perhaps necessary, to have a spokesman to move things along I think we need to remember the cyberpunk/cypherpunk ethic Bitcoin is based on.

It shouldn't be about celebrities or some centralized organization to hold our hands and look out for us. It is about empowering the individual to do for hirself.
It is about us - we the people - being able to take control of our own money and live our own lives. Living freely and in voluntary association to do and act as we feel appropriate for our own life situations.

We may need the training wheels of some well spoken salesman to get us started but eventually we should want to get out from under the thumb of Big Brother. 

Excuse the mixed metaphors...   but is this not what we want to move towards, while trying to not to scare those who find the prospect of such freedom scary?

That might be a good idea.
But after the way Bruce has been acting I would be surprised if a lot of those sponsors would want to remain in association with him.

And if intends to keep making that show of his and if he keeps calling it "The Bitcoin Show", instead of something that sounds less like an official Bitcoin thing, like "Bruce Wagner's Bitcoin Show", I will be sending some email to those sponsors expressing my disapproval.

Organizing the conference in Pattaya will be at least convenient for  one Bitcoiner (https://github.com/sacarlson).

Bruce doesn't care really. This is evidenced by the multitudes of advice given by the community and by people who actually have a background and experience, to which Bruce consistently turns them away or labels them as "haters" or "13 year olds". Whatever line of thinking Bruce is on is the only line of thinking that matters to him and he won't change from that. Even if his sponsors rose up, he'd just insist that there are many more sponsors out there that would advertise with him (and give him a big thumbs up for making stupid decisions) and continue on his merry way.

I first viewed this a couple months ago. I wonder if there's a copy without the captions. It may be neat to watch if the dialog had a Pattaya twist. Hmm! Hitler parody? ---> Hitler Learns About Bitcoin Conference in Pattaya Being Canceled

Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Holy shit there's some damning stuff in the SA GBS Bitcoin thread... I guess I sort of "defended" Bruce in warweed's thread, mainly out of disgust at the insinuation that gay people are all after underage boys (because IMHO it follows that straight guys are all attracted to underage females) - but holy shit, now I look like a bit of an ass. :(

note the nickname at the top of this:
https://i.imgur.com/84cAP.png

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34617.0


Pattaya was chosen purely because it is a center for business and commerHAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously?! This guy is such a clown, I can't believe people actually put stock into what he had to say about anything.

The fact that he calls "Men" - men and "boys" , well, "boys" is pretty disgusting and it's pretty debatable what he meant. There's a clear distinction made between the two and there's no amount of explaining away that anyone could do about this now that a lot of this stuff has been exposed.

Yeah Bruce, sure does sound like Pattaya is a swell place for investment opportunities, if you are into a lot of really, really troublesome and illegal shit.  The fact that you call us all "13 year olds" has taken on a whole new level of disturbing.

Also, in case of funny business, archives of the above and some related bits:

http://www.webcitation.org/61J35I1BA
http://www.webcitation.org/61J2xmodE
http://www.webcitation.org/61J2HlrmI
http://w01.freezepage.com/a/13146/43857QCZEKSRTRJ/0
http://www.freezepage.com/1314645610TGFHMCHQWA

This sucks! (no pud pun intended--well, maybe). Either I'm naive or simply dumb/slow. First off, I didn't know Bruce was gay until after I started this thread entitled Pattaya. Secondly, I've never been to SA until about an hour ago, although I knew about it from reading posts on this board. And finally, I just found and read the 4 links, among others--WOW, you provided above on my own, all within the past hour. Upon finding them, I probably wouldn't have listed them, but since they're here now, I might as well comment on what I've read.

I've opt to do so via a fictitious example:

If during the last presidential campaign, we discovered President Obama previously had sex with underage boys, he wouldn't have been elected our leader. He may still be elected if he were simply gay.

I now feel--and sorry for what I'm going to say, Bruce--that I don't want anybody in a leadership role representing Bitcoin that has opening discussed fucking little boys in their asses (yes, it's plural). Please accept my apologies for being subtle, but perhaps you, the reader, can read between the lines.

Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

Well, shit. 
http://imgur.com/TYEL3

Folks, you all need to dig a little deeper. It get worse!


http://nfcyouth.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/5/7/1957775/3362313.jpg


Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending

wow. just, wow.

can someone link to the sa thread that revealed all of this? 

You know, it already says that in your signature.  I'm sure you're really proud of that line and all, but repeating it twice per post is kind of pointless, and you tend to misspell it sometimes when you do.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3413928&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=444

Anywhere from page 441 onwards contains direct quotes from Bruce's postings elsewhere on the net (there's a few pages before that discussing Bruce's postings about women and rape).

All this really does for me is prove he's a creep and a charlatan. Beyond that, I don't see much that would suggest he's a pedo although he hugs that line mighty closely.

I don't think Bruce's personal proclivities would matter to people if he wasn't the most public face in the Bitcoin world. 

I wonder if this is a new kind of attack to bitcoin and it's community.
To merrily accuse a member to be a pedophile without a single proof.
Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you.   >:(

fxd that for you

Even if they have to be abused for only 1.88 bitcoins, they are not in an economic position to refuse...

At that time i customarily tipped 3.76 btc. In this case, I gave him only 2.63 btc. On the other hand I have paid as much as 7.52 btc for a hottie who changed my religion.
 
(@ 30 Thai bhat to the $ & $8.87 per btc)

This might be the deepest hole bruce ever had to pull himself out of.  No pun intended.

I'm suprised, bruce looked like a nice guy. I really hope he loses all his bitcoins and everything else >:(.

The Pattaya destination has been officially murdered  :D

He already lost more than 25,000 of them to mybitcoin!

If anyone really wants to go, I'm sure a certain internet Bitcoin host will be there. Sad thing is, there will probably be a few people who still think it's a great idea.

If only he hadn't stressed Pattaya so much and shit in the face of everyone who was saying it was a bad idea, for obvious reasons.

http://cache.ohinternet.com/images/0/03/Hansen_chris_2005.jpg

This guy thought Pattaya was a bad idea too....

poll - your fav BTC expos for 2012...

mine:

Medellin
Kabul
Bagdad
Tripoly - sik
Syria
The best korea<a

...

I made a somewhat lengthy post on this in the other thread we have on this forum, but I might as well make the same statement here.

If when you say Bruce needs to address things, you mean the accusations that are being made against him, I have to say I'm not completely sure I agree.

To everyone who is trying to make the issue be that Bruce is a pedophile? Prove it or shut up.

Slang isn't proof. A forum post you want to take out of context isn't proof. The fact he went to Pattaya and had a good time isn't proof. Hey, yeah, maybe he had a few hookers in Pattaya. Prove they were children or shut up.

I'm not a fan of Bruce. I have a number of issues with him. I have much bigger issues with the lot of you who think you have the right to make an accusation without evidence. Bruce has rights, including the right to not be slandered, whether you like the guy or not.

The only thing you do when you accuse him of something that you can't back up in any meaningful way is prove that you're at least as responsible for making Bitcoin users look bad as you want to claim Bruce is.

Good point, FAtlas. I will discontinue the practice. Thank you kindly for bringing it to my attention.

Daaaaamn...no wonder this thread has 9 pages!  I'd been ignoring it as dis-interesting since finding out that 'Pattaya' was a place in Thailand and the OP didn't give me any clues about why it was even on the board.

Yet another in the string of bad news for Bitcoin.  Maybe this issue will get that $/BTC ratio down some more and I can my order buy order in.

---

I've come to the philosophy that in fact Bitcoin is actually not terribly useful at the present time because indeed the USD still work quite well as money to buy things.  That leads me to the thought that the best thing for Bitcoin at this time is to really wring the system out with incident after incident of bad news and misfortune.  If it holds up from a system level after these attacks, that will say a lot (to me at least.)

...but maybe I've just got some fox/grapes thing going.  Who knows.

I have asked the moderator to delete the "other" post because it was construed as character assassination as opposed to a serious discussion of a public perception issue with bitcoin's self appointed evangelist. The fact is that in a place like Pattaya, the line between "innocent" prostitution and child sex is blurred. Sure "boy" can mean a young adult, but it can equally mean a child. The ambiguity was the point. I'd prefer to think the better of Bruce. I hope he addresses this issue head on and moves the Pattaya convention to Bangkok.

Call it ignorance if you want, but these forums attract some very scummy low-life types. That's probably why the developers wanted to get as far away from them as possible and move them offsite to bitcointalk

My fault!


Thank you for bringing this to my attention, tvbcof. Your point is valid. I remember when I was penning it that it may not have enough information, but in my mind I took it for granted that everyone would know what it is about. I now see that was not the case, hence you not reading this thread till it reached several pages. I'm sorry for that. Hope you enjoyed the reading of this entire thread.

It's not someone's opinions. It's Bruce's own words. If you Google the "punlman" username all of that sick, abusive crap was posted with, you get Bruce posts and nothing but Bruce posts from all over the Internet, many of which he signed off on by posting his real name and URL. With his picture as the avatar. And all from several years ago, so unless trolls were able to go back in time to before Bitcoins existed to crucify the Bitcoin Messiah, this looks legit. Shame on Bruce.

Don't worry, you don't need [new] glasses. You're not seeing where they're being proven because they're not being proven.

Hey, people who are opposed to Pattaya as a destination for the conference? Try making a legitimate argument like I have done several times, instead of trying to make Bruce look bad with no evidence. You might actually get somewhere other than on a list of the biggest dumbasses on this thread.

So you basically are arguing that rape is in part the girl's fault? Dressing slutty doesn't cause rape, fyi, but good on you for trying to justify rapist's actions with the whole 'she was dressing that way, she was practically begging for it'

Christ, what a bunch of awful fucking people you guys are.

What the fuck is wrong with you? No, no we don't. Jesus Christ.


For all of the things you think Koreans are backwards for, apparently this is the one you agree with.


In that post, they're talking about virgin prostitutes. How old do you think a virgin prostitute is in a city that's legendary for underage prostitution? Think about it for 2 seconds.

+1

I was typing out the same type response and got the "warning"  "another post was posted to this thread"  Well done my thoughts exactly.

What the hell??

You should have your head examined. Maybe you and Bruce can sign up for a combo package.

Furthermore, I'd like to quote myself from earlier in this topic:


Well, guess we kinda quickly found out the real motives now, didn't we. Hey Defxor, still so ready to defend Pattaya as a great choice for bitcoin?

And then Bruce:


http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/07-minister.jpg

There... is... no child... prostitution... in... PATTAYA! I... am.... not... going there... to.... touch young... boys!

what the fuck is wrong with you?  ???

this statement from bruce is no better:

http://brucewagner.wordpress.com/2006/12/16/how-to-avoid-becoming-a-rapist/


for fucks sake. this is insane, why would anyone defend this asshat?

I'm editing out the context, and I'm just putting in the relevant portions of your post.


You, sir, are nothing but a fucking piece of garbage. You have just proven that you are not worthy of any respect whatsoever. You are simply a piece of dogshit that learned to type. I at one point actually had some level of respect for you even though we disagree on a number of things. That is gone. That is gone forever. I will never give any credence whatsoever to anything that comes out of your mouth. Period.

And to think you are the head of the "United Association of Bitcoin International." I, for one, will not even consider doing business with any Bitcoin business that has even the faintest association with your "association."

Drop dead, asshole.

No.  There is something deeply wrong with people who think that.

Honestly, Bitcoin is going to die unless someone who isn't a disgusting piece of shit, whiny libertarian baby, or racist who scams foreigners takes the reigns and becomes a forefront member of the community soon.

Oh my god? Could you stop typing before you hurt yourself more?
Being raped is "poor fortune" on the victim's side? It is a girl's travesty if she gets drunk with a stranger and not that stranger's if he rapes her? REALLY? The girl needs her head examined and not the rapist? Are you for real?

Seriously. You should see a doctor.

I hate to break the bad news to everyone but "legally" rape is in the mind of the assailant. It don't make a wits difference what the "victim" thinks.

In regards to the rest , all I see is a bunch of usurpers trying to take over the top of the shitpile.

Bruce ain't shit to bitcoin. His status has nothing to do with bitcoin's viability.

There has been 5 Bruce threads in 7 days. The guy barely ever posts here.
That makes no sense.
Methinks someone has a personal vendetta (unrequited love maybe?) and is determined to fuck with the guy.

No one cares about y'all or him. Stop stinkin' up the joint.

Why is this thread in Bitcoin discussion? This drama is starting to get annoying.

I can think of many reasons. Stupidity. Like-mindedness. Thinking Bruce is cute. Being drunk. Being on oxycodone. Being drunk while on oxycodone. Copious amounts of crack. Severe brain damage.

In the interest of avoiding future drama:

Let the examples here of Bruce Wagner and Matthew N. Wright be lessons to everyone else who wants to step up as a public face in the Bitcoin community.

Is there dirt out there on you?  It'll be found, and you'll quickly become a liability to the Bitcoin community.  I don't necessarily mean anything incriminating (not a lawyer, not sure what these f'd up statements by Bruce Wagner legally constitute), just something that would prevent you from, say, winning an election among the young to middle aged westerner demographic.

Do you speak impulsively and have a hard time knowing when to just STFU?  Well then you're going to ruin your own reputation eventually, and render yourself a liability to the Bitcoin community.  Everybody has disagreeable traits/values/opinions - clearly some more than others - and it's key for public figures to be able to recognize and share only those that are relevant and necessary to be shared publicly.  And when they have to, lie about those they hold that are very unpopular.  Be concise and to the point when you have to speak.  Less is more.

The public eye is not kind or forgiving.  Keep that in mind.  If you don't think you're capable of withstanding its scrutiny, then find some other niche where you can be of help, and avoid doing damage.

Hurry, though - he's deleting everything! Nothing suspicious at all about that, of course...

I noticed the same. In response to the "smear and character blahblah" thread I wanted to post some of that "hard evidence" that the topicstarter couldn't find, only to see that some of the stuff that was linked to no longer exists.

Also, all the topics on this forum pointing to the material have been deleted.

If you go back through the Bitcoin thread on Something Awful, there are links to cached versions and screen captures.

Could probably also check the Wayback machine.

It's not that great at archiving the obscure and shady dark recesses of the internet, unfortunately. The forum the original post that started this was posted on is barely archived at all.

This is sick shit.

agreed.  Leave BitCon to OnlyOneTV and Pattaya and let's all start up some regional meet-ups.  BitConf Southwest in Austin TX would be nice, maybe during SXSW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_by_Southwest) when lots of people and media are in Austin from out of town anyway

There's no positive proof thus far, it's just ambiguous writing and his insistence on Pattaya as the location, with people putting 2 and 2 together on their own. I try not to throw around the term "pedo", because it's a label that sticks really badly.

The pedo thing isn't the only accusation though, and the others have damning evidence, but you apparently don't see anything wrong with being a rape apologist either so I don't expect you to see that.

Rape apologist. Big strike against Bruce.
Endorsed MyBitcoin and continued doing so even after problems were evident. Big strike against Bruce.
Lost at least 25,000 bitcoins that were either "his" or "under his control", it's hard to tell, he's changed the story to suit the question. Two big strikes against Bruce.
Bashed the forum in general when people weren't agreeing with him and didn't want what he wanted. Small strike against Bruce. Because to be completely fair, many of the people disagreeing weren't being above board, and there was plenty of probable slander being tossed at that point.
Has a show that's slim on fact and heavy on hype. Up Up Up! I'm hoping my bitcoins go up up up, sure. But we have to have some realistic expectations, and giving unrealistic expectations to viewers is not doing the currency a good service. Big strike against Bruce.
Doesn't know how a volume control works. Big strike against Bruce. (Seriously, were you able to understand any one complete sentence in the show where he interviewed MagicalTux after the Mt.Gox hack? I don't mean the phone line, I mean Bruce himself...)
Tries to make himself the most visible production but couldn't do it with the camera's demo mode off. What in the fuck?

I think this thread is an important and healthy. Bruce's salacious, gay lifestyle spills onto these pages like a smelly, heap of entrails, and we are revolted. We condemn the acts and in so doing we distance ourselves from the man and thus purge our system from something unhealthy.

It's certainly better that these facts emerge here instead of a banker rag.

Speak for yourself.

I'm gay. I don't condemn him for being gay. I don't condemn anyone else for being straight. Or gay. Or bi.

I also don't condemn him for anything he hasn't been proven to have done.

If you think you're going to be purging Bitcoin of gay users, though, think again. Every single friend I have gotten into Bitcoin is as homosexual as I am. Well, unless you count the one who's bisexual.

It seems that they gay people http://www.boyztown-pattaya.com/ (http://www.boyztown-pattaya.com/) call their men "boys" the same way "we" (I assume that you are not gay, which could be totally wrong) call our women "girl". But if you think calling a man "boy" is some evidence, one can only hope that the next time you call your favorite milf "girl" some swat team will jump through the window and arrests you for being a "pedo".</kidding>

And I don't care if you or Bruce are gay. But the point's been made quite well that Bruce's choice of locations seems designed to satisfy his prurient interests as much as to promote bitcoin. I don't want him to do this.

Then don't go.  But leave it at that.

What if I were specifically referring to virgin girls... virgin girls in the child sex capitol of the world? What if I could easily get cheap adult prostitutes in literally any other city in Thailand, but I insisted on the child sex capitol of the world for my business conference and refused to entertain any other suggestions? Then I freaked out and ran away when people started questioning my motives. And then started frantically deleting my Internet history when curious people started digging up info on the subject.

It's not conclusive proof, but holy shit it looks bad. Either this is the way it is and Bruce is a creep, or it's a big misunderstanding and Bruce merely REALLY REALLY looks like a creep. Not to mention his downright sickening views on rape. He managed to be thoroughly offensive to both genders with that post.  Any way you slice it, it looks really bad for Bitcoins.

Everyone has known Bruce was gay forever. Nobody gave a shit. This isn't about Bruce being gay. It's about Bruce being a really shitty person.

You think the situation would be any better if he were straight?

Bruce being gay or his choice of sexual partner is not at issue here whatsoever. What is at issue is that he's a disgusting moron who is leading Bitcoin into the abyss by using it to further his sexual proclivities under the guise of holding "conferences" that are nothing more than a world tour of his favorite sex houses. And his continued and hard-headed insistence that Pattaya doesn't have a child sex problem and that he won't entertain any notions of NOT having it there despite the uproar in the community is very disturbing.

All of the other accusations are people merely putting two and two together. Whether they are correct remains to be seen, as there is no hard evidence.

This is about Bruce damaging bitcoin's reputation with his personal life.

Right. If he hadn't pushed Pattaya so hard for personal reasons (that he tried to gloss over with a thin veneer of flimsy professional reasons), nobody would have ever thought to look for all of that dirt in the first place.

Even if you take the underage aspect out of the equation entirely, he was still trying to do something that had the potential to be very damaging to Bitcoin's reputation, and he was doing it for entirely personal and selfish reasons that he deliberately misrepresented.

Shortly before this Pattaya thing Bruce associated bitcoin with his salacious, gay lifestyle by inviting bitcoin enthusiasts to a gay hotel in Spain. See this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38916.0).

That thread is retarded and so are you, hth. 

shut up, seriously

Yeah that guy is a goddamn kook. Go away.

Two interesting emails I received today...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40258.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40258.0)

Bruce, trying to spin this into a conspiracy isn't helping your case at all

You doubled down on your post, dude

Wow, you are almost as bad as Bruce.  Good thing he's taking all the attention right now. 

I read it all already and everyone else is right.  You can deny it if you want, but you said it.  Then you said it again reworded a little more carefully.  Now you think you are laying out big lines of bullshit that covers it up, but it doesn't, it just makes you a bullshit shoveler.   

"Slutty women deserve to get raped" isn't like a stray fart at a cocktail party. It's not really something you say by accident.

+1

But I'm sure Mr. Matthew N. Wright will have some treatise to post in response, denying he ever said such a thing and clearly the problem is in the small minds of the readership who can't understand and process his excellence.

Fabrications? 





I guess now you'll just say it's being taken out of context am I right?

I knew you would, thanks for not letting me down. 

Now your family and friends want to assign fault to the victim.........? Jesus

There is no debate about this. The victim is not at fault for being a victim of rape, period.

Good to know clothing choices are now 'asking for trouble'


edit: If you really feel the need to post your misogynistic, racist, ignorant, or any other type of opinion that others may look down on you for online, at least have the good sense to not use your real name Matthew. Damn

Of course she blames herself, she went through a traumatic event, a lot of women feel guilty when they shouldn't.  That's your job to stand by her and tell her it isn't her fault.  Just because she went out and got drunk does not give anyone the right to violate her body, and for you to stand there and agree with her shows me you are the absolute scum of the earth.  That's your sister man, what's wrong with you?

Edit:
Nice, rape jokes, real classy there.  

Still, that is no excuse for blaming anyone other than the perp for the act of rape. You should really talk some sense into her, Matt.

This doesn't even make any fucking sense. Just because a person dresses like a Klansman doesn't mean they should be murdered or raped. Same applies to women who dress "slutty" -it doesn't give anyone carte blanche to do with her body as they wish.

I use to have some type of respect for you. Now you are just hurting our community. If it's true and your family did go through this pain, then it's a shame that you would divulge all their personal information in such a public manner, especially since you yourself are a public person.

I really don't think people really understand how many people come to this forum, this is not a regular web forum with 4-5 of your friends. This is an investors forum that gets millions of hits, and where eyes from all over the world come to read about their investments. Then they run into all the garbage on this forum, and people wonder why prices are down?

You know who the people that are trolling you are. Why in god's name would you give them even more ammo?

This isn't about assigning fault to the victim. This is about determining whether there is a victim at all. Like I said before , the law is that rape or consent is in the mind of the alleged attacker. It's applies to any crime, it's called mens rea. If he/she believes there was consent , it doesn't matter what the other person thinks.

The fact is that dressing provocatively is consent in the mind of some people.  Right or wrong some sociopaths think that  way.
There is no "She was asking to be raped" defense. In fact, I have seen anyone forward that notion. What I've seen people saying that others will get the false impression of consent. Even if there is a false impression of consent there is no rape.
It really is amateur hour in this place.

If your sister was blind drunk, got raped, and now blames herself (even partly), this is the part where any half-decent human being jumps in and tells her not to blame herself.

I'm not a psychologist, nor have I ever been raped, but I gather that self-loathing is typically part of the grieving process after a rape... it's something to be worked through, not something to be settled on with your family saying something along the lines of "well I guess you won't be that stupid again, will you?"

I am really glad you aren't an attorney. That is completely laughable.

In fact, your entire post is ridiculous.  It doesn't matter what the attacker thinks, if there is no consent or the person is unable to give their consent, then it's rape, period.

You have no problem scamming foreigners (whom you talk about as if they were backwards and inferior) and you allow and encourage the thought your sister has that her rape was her fault.

Guess what bro? You are a sociopath

You are still trying to say that if a woman dresses a particular way ("slutty"), then she's asking for trouble.   It's up to society to have the self-control they need to be able to control themselves from either killing the Klansman or raping the "slut". There is no excuse for taking either action.

Actually that's not 100% true, as the key factor in mens rea in such cases is what a reasonable person would think. Fact is that reasonable people don't mean slutty clothing is consent and the kicking and screaming is just her playing hard to get.

But seriously, whether the rapist thinks it's consent or not is irrelevant, and mens rea doesn't necessarily apply. To argue otherwise is a juvenile and idiotic approach to criminal justice - it's basically saying that anyone who doesn't know it's not right to steal is free to go ahead and rob others blind.

Matthew, please would you finally just take the advice I gave you earlier and stop talking for a while?

Here's another lesson for you:  Although you did the right thing by emphasizing that you're socially retarded but working on it, you went wrong by apologizing!  Apologies are like blood to these sharks!  It's not like they're going to forgive you and start to like you if you apologize.  You just make yourself look more weak and pathetic, and resign yourself to waiting until they stop out of pity for you.  But only a few will stop at any given time.  And don't you see that they happily come back to feed after you when you inevitably say the next stupid thing to the ones who haven't stopped?

And don't mistake your attackers for being sincere.  They're primarily concerned with fucking with you.  The cause of women being able to dress slutty more safely, while extremely noble, is a very distant second priority for these people.  Leave the issue alone, it's ancillary.  You had successfully dealt with it by claiming stupidity, you just didn't let the dust settle afterward.

Weren't you a schoolteacher?  Why don't you know how this works yet?

Actually, d'aniel, some of us neither know Matthew nor care, but were genuinely offended by even the remotest intimation that a woman (or man, or boy, or girl) could be held partly responsible for their own rape.

It truly is an argument that was settled well over 20 years ago. Matthew should have known better than to say that.

"a tomato is a vegetable" is a mistake... "a woman should know better than to dress slutty lest she get raped" is a black hole of assholeness.

You were "genuinely offended" that some obvious dumbass who you admittedly don't care about said something dumb on the Internet.  Right...

Yup, some dumb ass says "a tomato is a vegetable", I'm not offended... same dumbass says "slutty women deserve to get raped", "Hitler had the right idea", "blacks are inferior" and a few other choice, idiotic remarks, then I am offended. I don't lose any sleep over it, nor do I choose to pick a fight. But if such stupidity were to be uttered in my presence, I'd feel compelled to speak up against it. As I think I am doing now.

Do you think how a woman dresses, or how much she's had to drink, or how she dances, makes her in any way responsible for her being raped? If you don't, it speaks highly of you. If you don't, but choose to not speak up when some other twit says so, it makes you a bit of an ass.

My point was that, contrary to your argument, not everyone who objected to Matthew's remarks did so out of a desire to destroy Matthew. I neither know him nor particularly care what happens with him one way or another. I disliked his statement profoundly, so your original theory doesn't hold.

He won't.  He cannot.  That's part of his pathology.  He'll stop when some brain chemical balances shift around and not before.

(That's my read on things at least and I have some sympathy for the guy...I just hope I don't find out in a few weeks that he seems to do extra-ordinarily unseemly things to other people.)

Well of course the standard is reasonable person. Obviously kicking and screaming and shouts of no would tell anyone the other person doesn't consent. Still , it's whether the attacker believes (or should have) there was a rape. Believe me I was shocked when I first found this out.

If it was about based on the mind of the victim the rape trial would last 5 seconds and would be one question.
District Attorney: Is this the person that raped you?
Victim:Yes.
What is the defense going to do? Drill here on if she is really really really sure she was raped?

I people want to put BTC where there mouth is and I'll get a Judge's Bench book and show y'all jury instructions for a rape trial.

Comments like this

prove it's amateur hour. Reality doesn't fit into pre-canned responses.

There is a lot of mixing of apples and oranges. There is a distinction between determining whether a rape occurred and concluding a rape occurred and attempting to justify the act ex post facto.

If my "theory" gets Matthew to take a breather before his next well-deserved verbal beating, then it achieved its purpose.

Ok everybody break it up.

Pattaya is obviously a bad idea and no one wants it let's just stick to that and move on to productive new measures and everyone stop bashing each other. Yeah there's some ugly stuff found and this thread has turned even uglier.

Lifestyles and bitcoin should be kept separate.
repeat
Lifestyles and bitcoin should be kept separate.

Let's close this bitch fest down and focus on cleaning up and
moving on.  

- Blackout

Bruce started his own thread, it's just as bad

I chose the name buttcoin because bitcoin kinda sounds like buttcoin and it's funny

Thank you kindly, buttcoin, for making that clear to me. Hope you didn't take it the wrong way.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6126/6097332969_2ceea3bc0e_z.jpg

Hindsight dictates that we should have given Bruce a little more credit when he implemented this idea. He's the only man that could have pulled this off in Pattaya with a three-prong approach: Business; Pleasure; and Profit. Within the golden-triangle, it's simply referred to as BPP.