Are Naughty Boys Really Declining?

[SP55]

This has always been on my "I don't get it"-list why bargames work so well for the ladybars but no boybar owner has tried the idea.

Most of the gay bar owners I've met had ZERO experience running a bar before launching their adventures in Pattaya. Where the ones with experienced ladyboy mamasans always seemed to offer more in terms of entertainment.

I always thought it would be fun to watch the boys playing with ping pong balls the way the girls do. You have to use your imagination for that one...

Regarding ping pong-balls. Hat's off to the owner in Winnerboys for having introduced the ping pong throwing to the boys on stage. The only boybar that I know that has this! At least this owner is trying new ideas. Ping pong balls are standard in every lady agogo in Pattaya and generates a lot of income for the bars and girls, and fun for the customers. Yet only one boy agogo in Pattaya has this.

[Jun]

No, but charging 300 baht for drinks and 700 off-fees in a bar with overdressed boys might be the thing that keeps customers away!

We can go to NighBoy & pay 300 baht to watch boys in jeans. In a bar, where traditionally, the boys are not the type I like.
Or go to Gus Bar in Jomtien and pay 70 baht to watch some quite nice boys in shorts. They have a happy hour, at a very sensible time, around 10 pm.

With an offer like that, NighBoy they don't deserve to survive.

I always thought it would be fun to watch the boys playing with ping pong balls the way the girls do. You have to use your imagination for that one...

I'm not sure I want to see the result that I'm imagining. With either gender.
I don't recall seeing the ping pong balls in Winner Bar actually get deployed.

In recent years, the most fun I've had in there was when one lad was trying to remove the underwear of another. He eventually succeeded, with the assistance of the fully clothed tomboy bar tender. That ticks a few boxes.

If Winner have the same boy selection as on my last visit, no matter what they do with entertainment, I would still choose to go somewhere else.
The evidence suggests it's quite hard to get attractive Thai boys to prance around a stage in their underwear these days. The bars I'd choose frequent to usually solve that problem with other nationalities and/or more conservative dress codes.

[Dodger]

Research shows that, overall, high users of dating apps report a lower sense of community, higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of satisfaction with life. I don’t know enough about this stuff to agree or disagree with that prognosis, but I do know that guys I know (expats and tourists) who spend 24/7 on the apps sending asynchronous text messages to strangers seem detached, irritable, and sometimes flat-out depressed to me. There’s no doubt about it.

As boring as the current bar scene seems to many (including myself) it’s probably not a bad idea to realize the importance of getting enough social interaction in your daily diet by some means. I imagine that’s why we see so many expats gathering in places like Jomtien Complex at night just enjoying some conversation with friends.

As much as I throw stones at the scene in general the way its devolving – there are definitely advantages to having places to go to just talk to people and practice being human again…that’s if you can leave that smartphone in your pocket long enough.

There are fewer sex tourists coming to Thailand for a whole host of reasons, but the increase in dating app popularity has to be a contributor. It would be interesting to know what percentage of time the average sex tourist spends on the apps when they come to Thailand versus time spent out on the gay scene. Without having these data it’s very difficult to determine which is having the greatest negative impact on the gay venues.

Right now I contend that both factors are having an equal negative impact. That’s just based on what I can see with my eyes. And yes Jun I know - I don’t go to the bars very often, but I can assure you I still have pretty good vision.

[Jun]

Research shows that, overall, high users of dating apps report a lower sense of community, higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of satisfaction with life. I don’t know enough about this stuff to agree or disagree with that prognosis, but I do know that guys I know (expats and tourists) who spend 24/7 on the apps sending asynchronous text messages to strangers seem detached, irritable, and sometimes flat-out depressed to me. There’s no doubt about it.

Do you have a link to the research please?

I also wouldn't assume that you or I are superior to people who spend 24/7 on the apps sending messages to strangers when we're spending time arguing with strangers on a gay message board. Same same.

My online gay dating might peak at about 2 hours per day when I'm browsing the catalogue. But I don't need that many new boys.
My typical online date would be booked with about 2 minutes of chat on Line with a boy that I already know and like.

There are fewer sex tourists coming to Thailand for a whole host of reasons, but the increase in dating app popularity has to be a contributor.

This includes a flawed assumption.
You continue to confuse the number of sex tourists actually coming to Thailand with the number that you estimate are visiting the gay bars.
When we know those tourists no longer have to visit bars to find a boy.
Once upon a time, tourists like me would visit the gogo bars every day of the week, as that's where they boys were. Bar visits are now optional, so I've halved my number of visits to bars.
Extrapolating that, your way of counting would halve the number of sex tourists.

Trying not to over estimate our own knowledge:
1 We don't know if the number of sex tourists is up or down.
2 We have an estimate that the number of bar visitors is probably down.

I'd agree that bar visitors are probably down, but not by as much as those with visions of Sunee Plaza in their heads might think.
Every bar lost in Sunee has been replaced by a bar gained in Jomtien.

What I can also report is that the proportion of single males on the flights to Thailand seems to be as high as it ever was.

Then they have added many sex tourists from India and the Middle East, although thankfully very few venture onto the gay scene.

[Dodger]

Do you have a link to the research please?

Sure:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... x_with_men

[Jun]

Thank you.

1 Self esteem, loneliness etc is higher among more frequent users of the apps. Which is the cause and which is the effect is unclear.

2 "There is some evidence that those MSM who use GDAs mainly for sexual encounters report higher levels of self-esteem and of satisfaction with life compared to those who use GDAs mainly for other reasons"
I suspect those using the apps in Pattaya do so mainly for sexual encounters. That's what I do & it's very satisfying.
The "other reasons" must be something like meeting new people. Anyone wanting to do that may well be doing so because they lack friends.

3 The survey is done in London.
Online dating in the UK is full of disappointments, having to lower expectations, fraudulent profiles etc.
In Pattaya, it's remarkable what can be done with a modest amount of money.

[Dodger]

Thank you.

1 Self esteem, loneliness etc is higher among more frequent users of the apps. Which is the cause and which is the effect is unclear.

2 "There is some evidence that those MSM who use GDAs mainly for sexual encounters report higher levels of self-esteem and of satisfaction with life compared to those who use GDAs mainly for other reasons"
I suspect those using the apps in Pattaya do so mainly for sexual encounters. That's what I do & it's very satisfying.
The "other reasons" must be something like meeting new people. Anyone wanting to do that may well be doing so because they lack friends.

3 The survey is done in London.
Online dating in the UK is full of disappointments, having to lower expectations, fraudulent profiles etc.
In Pattaya, it's remarkable what can be done with a modest amount of money.

If you read the entire abstract you'll gain a broader and more detailed understanding.

[Jun]

1

If you read the entire abstract you'll gain a broader and more detailed understanding.

Reading is only part of it.
If you think about what you have read & the relevance to a totally different environment, you might also gain a broader & more detailed understanding.

2 "Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom". Charlie Munger
Now if there was a little more of this, we might have a better quality of conversation.

[Dodger]

"Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom". Charlie Munger

"People who are blind to their own blindness will never see the dawn". Dodger

[Dodger]

Back to the topic:

Only time will tell which way the trends in sex tourism will go, but it's starting to look like Thailand's plans to clean-up its image are paying some dividends (for them - not for us) as the scenes continue to soften. That, coupled with the increase in app users will no doubt continue to influence the numbers going forward.

They were starting to apply pressure to the happy ending massage parlors last year - but this appears to have fallen by the wayside. Hopefully that's where it will remain.

I think we can all agree that we appreciate the scene(s) we have available to us now and aern't taking them for granted. Maybe if they legalize prostitution and get side-tracked with the gambling initiatives in Pattaya things will loosen up a bit. Who knows?