Big Baby Kenny has been a regular commenter on Thailand’s nightlife scene for awhile now. He started posting on the Big Mango website as a guest author but after a major falling out with the owners of the bar/blog he started up BigBabyKenny.com. He reposted many of the articles that he had written for the Big Mango and started adding new ones.
Personally, I’ve always found his articles insightful. If anything, they’re different. They’re not the same old drivel boasting about one’s prowess in having sex with prostitutes. Even if you didn’t agree with everything he said at least he was approaching life in Thailand from a completely different perspective than most.
They were also potentially offensive. Many focused on the economics of how the prostitution and bar scene works in Thailand. Obviously people who take exception to such topics would find his writing to be crude.
One of the biggest mistakes I think BBK made when he set up his own blog was that he insisted on using it as a platform to bash the Big Mango bar, blog, their owners, and anybody who took their side in the disagreement. In the beginning I thought he just needed to get some bad feelings out and then he would go back to his normal writing but it never stopped. Every topic would somehow be spun around to disparage the Big Mango owners.
I had to quit reading the site altogether because I couldn’t take the negativity and had no desire to be pulled into the drama. I noticed that many others were saying the same thing in the comments. People had come to the site to read his interesting twists on meeting girls in Thailand but instead the site became about finding fault in everything the Big Mango guys did.
Behind the scenes, it seems, there was a war going on between the Big Mango and BBK which included death threats, letters to BBK’s employer, and other nasty stuff.
See, it turns out that Big Baby Kenny is actually, Professor Kenneth Ng, who teaches economics at California State University Northridge. Eventually a local newspaper, The Daily News, picked up the story and BBK “voluntarily” opted to take his site down.
He gives a rather long-winded explanation of the details on what’s left of the site but having watched this whole mess unfold I wanted to point out some things I believe were inaccurate in his blog post.
First is his statement calling bars in Thailand, brothels.
For those not familiar with Bangkok, many bars, including the Big Mango Bar, are actually brothels.
I guess it depends on which definition you use for brothel. The definition I’m familiar with is a place almost exclusively dedicated to prostitution and where customers can have sex with the prostitutes on the premises. The Big Mango (and most other bars) don’t fit this definition at all. I think BBK is trying to take another swipe at the owners of the Big Mango by using a word that can have more sinister meanings.
The unedited exclusive pictures of nightclubs, bars, Thai clubs, and girls inhabiting the Thailand Girl Scene stand as groundbreaking photojournalism. You couldn’t find anything like it on the internet or in the mainstream press and the photography was one of the most popular features of BigBabyKenny.com.
I think this is part of where BBK starts to whitewash what his site really was. He’s claiming to be a photojournalist rather than a guy writing about how much it will cost to sponsor a coyote dancer.
And to be completely honest, as someone who is an amateur photographer, the photography wasn’t all that great. All of that isn’t his fault as taking photos in bars and nightclubs, especially when they may have rules against photography, isn’t easy. But, that doesn’t mean that any blurry, out of focus shot is instant photojournalism.
Unfortunately, BigBabyKenny got too good for it’s own good.
The articles were too good at laying bare the economic underpinnings, the inter-personal dynamics, the nuts and bolts, and even the humorous side of The Thailand Girl Scene.
The discussion of The Thailand Girl Scene was too interesting and too revealing about the realites of life in a third world country where the usual ways women advance themselves socially and economically in The World are blocked off.
The photography was too good at documenting the nitty gritty nature of the various nooks and crannies of the Thailand nightlife industry.
The realities of life, love, dating, marriage, and sex in Southeast Asia and the politically correct western centric view of the world clashed.
Better to live in a make believe fairy tale western fantasy version of Southeast Asian culture and society than deal with an accurate, well documented truth.
Unfortunately, because I am a professor at a big public university, the popularity and publicity surrounding the ideas, the subjects and questions discussed and debated, and, of course, the ground breaking photography at BigBabyKenny.com became so great that the site had to be turned off.
Actually, none of this is true. Even according to BBK’s own version of events he took the site down because of pressure he got after the Daily News profiled this university professor running a website that promotes sex tourism.
Most of you are here reading this today because of an article written in the Daily News about BigBabyKenny.com. That article is the direct result of this anonymous email campaign.
How can the removal of the website be a direct result of the article written in the Daily News yet also be because the site was too good? I haven’t seen the Daily News article (I did see one on the Contra Costa Times website) but I highly, highly doubt it was about what a great website BigBabyKenny.com was.
It had nothing to do with the quality of the website. If it was a crappy website he would be in the same position he’s in right now. Being too good has nothing to do with it.
And the reality is, there’s an old saying “Don’t fuck with another man’s livelihood.” And that’s exactly what BBK did. His entire blog drifted from being about the nightlife scene in Thailand to finding any excuse to take a swipe at the Big Mango owners. He tries to sugar-coat it by describing what he did innocently. Here’s an example of trying to downplay things now.
Things heated up in the Fall when Nick, Michael and Graham put a restaurant they owned, The Duke of Wellington, on the market. They hired a business broker in Bangkok and the bar was publicly advertised on the internet. Certain claims were made about how much revenue the bar was generating and that the bar was profitable. These claims were discussed openly on BigBabyKenny.com.
No they weren’t. BBK did nothing but speculate negatively about the honesty of the owners and how well the business was doing. His version now makes it sound as if this was some sort of economics case study.
The bar/restaurant business in Bangkok is a small community. Once word started getting around that the books might be cooked it sure as hell hurt their selling prospects.
He wrote thousands of words and entire blog posts about what a horrible place the Big Mango is. He disparaged their owners openly and frequently. He posted every little rumor he heard about the owners. When they took their website down for some redecorating he jumped all over it to suggest all sorts of possible reasons for the move.
Like I said, you don’t fuck with another man’s livelihood. Everything that’s happened and will happen has been brought about by BBK himself.
Now, I don’t want to seem like I’m pro-Big Mango and anti-BBK. I’m not. I really liked his blog. I liked his writing. I wish he would have kept doing what made me like his work in the first place instead of getting into this pissing contest. If what BBK says is true, what the owners of the Big Mango have done is deplorable. But had BBK not been pushing the situation I doubt it would have ever come to this.
If he would have just launched BigBabyKenny.com and never mentioned the Big Mango they would have not had a reason to escalate the situation further. If he would have gotten his initial anger out at the Big Mango guys and then moved on I doubt they would have continued to escalate their attacks.
But the more he kept fucking with their livelihood the more the situation deteriorated.
At this time, I also made a decision to dig in and not be pushed around. The threats of violence, the anonymous emails to the university, and the open threats from Graham were nasty and just not right. Giving in to them, although it was the easy thing to do, was just wrong. Come what may I was going to face them down.
Nick, Michael, and Graham could threaten all they wanted but I had done nothing wrong and I wasn’t going to let them silence me or push me around. Whatever happened, I was not going to let them prevail.
But they did prevail in the end. The blog is now offline. He’s been outed at his place of work and in the press as a sex tourist. Surely any victories BBK thinks he achieved are purely Pyrrhic ones.
I’m sorry the situation came to this. And I’m sorry BBK’s previous writings are now gone (not even available in Google’s cache). But I’m not upset to see this pointless battle of egos come to a conclusion.
You pretty much whitewash what the big mango crew did – threatened to beat him up, for one, and many other things – and give a misleading impression that most Kenny posts devolved into Mango bashing posts, which is patently untrue. Most Kenny posts had nothing to with the Mango crew, and what probably kept the fire going most was the hired goons of the Mango Crew constantly posting on Kenny’s site and stoking the flames.
Kenny may not have been an angel and you are right that he whitewashed the contents and purpose of his site to some extent, but he was certainly more sinned against than sinning, and that’s not the impression you give in your little write up.
Coincidentally, the owners of the Mango have been outed and received a high degree of publicity as well, which is far more damaging to any future job prospects those guys have in America or any Western country than the damage done to Kenny, who has tenure and whose job is fully secure.
I would speculate the Mango guys would now have a tough time getting hired in the States or in England, where a simple google search on their names will dig up so much unsavory material.
I wonder if they think it was worth escalating things to this point?
The whole revenge thing was retarded, and if anyone can be said to have gotten the worst end of the stick it is the Mango crew, which is just as they were the ones who continued the fuel the issue – Kenny obviously remains unaffected almost completely, but the real losers are the public avid for reliable, non-politicized info on Thailand, which is now pretty much impossible to come by. Stickman is steeped in classic ex-pat bitterness that colors everything he writes to the point where much of it is simply unreliable as a guide to conduct, and no other site really deals with the issues in the same depth. Kenny will continue to use his knowledge and experience to have a good time in Thailand, the Mango crew no longer live in Thailand anyways and now will now have a tougher time getting hired by a Western company, but what will happen to anyone wanting to find info on how to navigate the intricate pathways of the Thai scene without coming to grief, and to have the best time? They will be left out in the lurch.
Oh well, that’s life in the end. The Thai blog scene has always been dominated by the bitter loser contingent who had a very dim grasp of how thing really operated in Thailand, and who wrote more to bring others into their fold of misery and failure in the Thai scene – misery loves company – than out of an optimistic desire to actually figure things out and succeed in Thailand. For one brief moment something else came onto the scene, and now has sunk back into the oblivion from whence it came, and this leaves ex-pat life in Thailand exactly where it has always really been, and perhaps where it should always be; the rare few who are intelligent, optimistic, and resolute enough to figure out how to make a success of the Thai scene keep their wisdom close to their chests and remain out of site in the blogosphere to the point where most are barely aware that such people exist in Bangkok, and the Thailand blog scene continues as a venting ground for the bitter and the failures who cast their nets far and wide in their attempts to bring all fresh ex-pats into their miserable corner.
John,
You sound like an apologist for BBK.
“what probably kept the fire going most was the hired goons of the Mango Crew constantly posting on Kenny’s site and stoking the flames.”
“and if anyone can be said to have gotten the worst end of the stick it is the Mango crew, which is just as they were the ones who continued the fuel the issue”
This is what BBK continually asserted from the first day he had people making derogatory comments about him or his site. When pressed for proof BBK was notably silent. BBK never did post one piece of proof concerning the death threats he claimed to receive. When things would start to quiet down BBK would post another article about the Big Mango in an effort to generate more comments and interest in his site.
If the Big Mango guys got the worst of it, then why is Bkkspy, someone who openly commented about his hatred for the Big Mango, still suggesting revenge? This would lead one to believe BBK’s loopy fans still have an issues with how things ended.
Billy
I don’t whitewash anything. The difference is, most of this is Kenny’s word against the Mango Boys. How do I know that he received death threats? How do I know anything he said was true? I can only write this from what he said he did and what I’ve seen for my own eyes.
I never took sides in the debate. I am friends with the Mango Boys and Kenny and I have exchanged emails in the past. In fact, I was hoping to meet him eventually.
What Kenny did was right there in front of my own eyes. I saw the posts. I saw all of the backhanded statements he made. Even the tagline of his blog “No censorship, No agendas . . . ” (or whatever it was) was 100% directed at the Mango Boys.
I really did get tired of reading his using every excuse to bash both the Mango Boys. I quit reading his blog altogether because of it. Not because of any loyalty to the Mango Boys but because it just got boring. His posts became so hate-filled.
But mostly, I wrote this in the way I did because Kenny was the one who was always in control of where this ended. He could have gone off and started his own blog without all of the anti-Mango rants. The Mango Boys would have had no reason to make death threats or whatever it is they did (or didn’t do). Kenny was always the one in control of when it would stop. All he had to do is say “Okay, this has gone far enough. How about a truce?”
But he didn’t. Even until the end he was taking his shots at the Mango. So, who is to blame? Even if the Mango Boys did everything just as Kenny has outlined (and based on reading Kenny’s self-congratulatory, whitewashing farewell, I have my doubts about the accuracy of everything he’s said about the Mango Boys since there are things he’s said that are patently inaccurate) Kenny could have called it off at any time.
In the end, it was all pointless. Everybody ends up a loser.
You claim the Mango Boys got the worse end of it . . . well, I only see one mention of their true names anywhere on the internet and it’s in Kenny’s farewell. Undoubtedly he did that intentionally in order to get Google to index their names so even now he’s still instigating and escalating the situation.
But, all they have to do is throw their name on enough other stuff to bury Kenny’s mention of him. Kenny is all the rage of Twitter right now and several websites are writing very negative things about him. His chances of being taken seriously in his field again . . . very slim. Plus his students, co-workers, etc all know him as a sex tourist now. Don’t be surprised if a sexual harassment suit doesn’t get filed against him by a disgruntled student or maybe by some feminist who thinks he’s exploited women and wants to fuck him over.
So yeah, what it worth it? Was it worth it to limit your career, get labeled as a sex tourist, etc all because the Mango Boys rejected one of his submissions and called him a perv? Really?
Billy,
Nah, I sound like an objective observer. I don’t really have a dog in this fight and don’t want to get bogged down in a dispute over this nonsense, but I will make a few points.
The flamers that infested Kenny’s site and hijacked literally every thread were the ones that simply wouldn’t let the issue die. They were there every day, in larger numbers than regular posters, on every thread, trying to shut the discussion down and destroy the blog, when easily the vast majority of these threads had nothing to do with the Big Mango crew – probably about 90% of the threads made no reference to the Big Mango crew at all.
Had these flamers simply gone away, the whole issue would have quietly faded into background noise. Kenny, having been publicly and loudly defamed by the Mango crew, had every right to make a few negative posts about them, and his posts were generally far milder than theirs, and there the issue would have stayed if these flamers had not tried so very hard to destroy the blog.
Even then, the vast majority of the contents of Kenny’s site had nothing to do with the Mango crew at all.
I don’t know what you mean by proof, because the proof was there in the comments day in, day out, endlessly. As for the violence threats, they were reported by others, not Kenny, and were also in the comments section of the BDK blog for all to see as well.
Billy Bangkok – I at first was shocked that you could think the majority of the stuff on Kenny’s site had anything to do with the Mango boys, but when you explain that you even object to his tagline of no censoreship, etc as a dig at the Mango boys I can see how to your particular eyes indeed everything would appear as having to do with the Mango boys. I leave it to each person on his own to decide if if your peculiar way of looking at Kenny’s site is evidence of lack of prejudice against Kenny, as you claim is your attitude, or the presence of it, but now at least that you have given us some insight into your methodology one can see how you have arrived at your conclusions. Thank you.
The point is, the Mango boys started it, kept it going, and escalated it – why the burden was on Kenny to call out for a truce, rather than fight it out like a man is beyond me. I’m sure the Mango boys, after starting the fight and escalating it, would have wanted just that, for Kenny to cry out that he had had enough, but I fail to see why Kenny needed to comply with their wishes. Further, Kenny barely did anything – the vast majority of his posts had nothing to do with the Mango boys and those that did avoided strong language and were mild.
Trust me, large and reputable American companies are EXTREMELY throrough in researching prospective hirees, if the Mango boys owned a bar in Bangkok that was possible a brothel they will know of it. It’s out there, it will never go away. Legal liabilities in the States are simply too enormous to not do these kinds of checks, which from my POV at least is retarded, but that’s how it is in America at the moment. The Mango boys, through their own actions, are pretty much unhirable by large American companies, which may not even be a big deal for them, I don’t know.
As for Kenny, the guy’s got tenure – he is invulnurable. Academia in the States is chock full of oddballs and eccentrics, and Kenny has an eminently defensible position – his career has a teacher cannot be touched, and thank God academic work in the States is not (yet) screened according to the persons personal life or views on various subjects, and I seriously doubt his friends and family found anything surprising on the site.
Anyways, whatever. It’s pretty obvious where your sympathies lie, despite your disclaimers, and as for me, while the Mango boys were forgettable as bloggers, easily assimilable to the dominant Bangkok paradigm of cantankerous blogger with a chip on his shoulder, clueless about how to succeed in the Thai scene and resentful of anyone who seems better able to figure it out, and evidently they were a bullying and unsavory group of individuals as well, Kenny was something new, different, and rare on the Thai blog scene, but the Old Guard couldn’t stand him, and they got him, but they burned themselves worse. Maybe it was worth it for them.
The real sufferers are us. Trust me, Kenny will continue to have a great time in Thailand racking up more experience and figuring out better how to have a good time there. Just we won’t hear about it.
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@ John,
Regarding your mention of the flamers that continually posted on BBK. The general consensus was that these were a very, very, few people posting under many pseudonyms and IMPERSONATING other people and replying to themselves back and forth.
And again, the damage done is strictly the fault of BBK. He actually turned OFF the “gravatar” setting which would allow everyone to confirm that a post was “genuine” by showing their ID-specific avatar (like mine). He also never bothered to police his site and remove worthless and offensive posts – all in the supposed name of free speech. Though I think it was much more in the hopes of gaining increased notoriety/traffic. But he actually DID delete posts if he didn’t like them / they hit too close to him, so his hypocrisy knew no bounds.
I have direct “proof” of the items above since I was one of the people who was impersonated on his site. BBK allowed these false posts to remain even after being informed that they were not made by the people named. The passive-agressive deviousness of his actions belies his “injured innocent” act.
I know neither the BMB owners nor BBK personally and watched this whole thing unfold – while the BMB owners will not be canonized as saints at any time in the near future, the end result of all this is the fault of BBK. He reaped what he sowed.
John,
The owners of the Big Mango Bar were not outed, and could not possibly be outed. They voluntarily signed their names to business registration statements and shareholder agreements. In Thailand, these are public records.
The only meaningful point of debate is whether or not they were defamed by Kenny ascribing incompletely documented behaviors to them; brothel-keeping comes to mind. That is legally actionable in many jurisdictions, Thailand included.
There is room for discussion on the subject of whether Big Mango Bar has a bar-fine system in place, whether a bar-fine quota is in force, and the larger question over what similarity there is between a bar-fine (or more pointedly in the girls’ parlance an “off”) and the more conventional notion of a brothel where most often services are rendered on-premises by a staff retained primarily for their sexual services function (neither of which has ever been true, by any account, at the Big Mango in any location).
Because of the very nature of the place, anyone signing on the dotted line for a stake in a bar business on Soi Nana Tai is just asking for it as regards their employment prospects in other fields. The cardinal sin of the Big Mango Bar owners was their naive and unfounded presumption of anonymity.
Sorry John, but you’re out in left field on this.
If Kenny had one talent it was for creating controversy and saying things much of the expat community thought was shyte.
Kenny made many, many claims that people were more than happy to swallow without any evidence. Even when confronted with facts directly negating his opinion he would talk down to them as if they were insolent for even entering into a discussion with him (which is coincidentally what several students have said on his site and ratemyprofessor.com).
To say there were only 3 or 4 people who read BBK and then decided Kenny was clueless on the things he wrote is to stick one’s head in the sand. He made a number of claims, including the death threats claim, public knowledge only after he saw the end was near and wanted public support.
I think this one line from the Daily Badger Herald says it all
“I was driven to get back at places like the Big Mango,” Ng said. “And that is why I created the blog.”
And he did. As he attacked several other websites in addition to TFS2M in his quest to be the Professor of Prostitution. Several people on his blog commented it was like watching a train wreck or car accident in the making. He had it out for the Big Mango Bar from the beginning and as Billy rightly points out it was his behavior which highlighted that objective and his drive to be Professor of Prostitution that led to his demise.
@ John
You’ve misread this completely. If you are not familiar with the individuals involved and draw your conclusions just from what you have read then it may well be an easy mistake to make.
Any number of people will queue up to tell you what open, honest, hospitable guys the Mango boys are – my personal experience is that I initially got useful information from their blog, then got to know them better as individuals. They treat their customers as honourable guests, they have taken me out and about showing me around town – giving up their time to make my stay more enjoyable – I tell you, I couldn’t do it. I’m just not that selfless.
Even when it appeared to the untrained eye that Kenny was ‘not having a go’ he invariably was – he would always slip something in like ‘seeing some guys I recognised from the Big Mango’ – subtext… yaaah boo sucks Big Mango…. YOUR customers read MY blog. It was just relentless. While he may have thought himself subtle, what passes for subtle as far as Kenny was concerned was startlingly obvious to the rest of us.
Flaming is fine I guess – it seems a bit of a waste of human endeavour but when you cross the line and attack someones livelihood as he did, you’ve stepped over the line. Was it unfortunate that the ONLY way that Kenny could be stopped was by exposing him at his place of work? Yes of course it was. But frankly, he only got back that which he had been inflicting on others for months – all attempts to get him to desist floundered because he held a despotic view that he had some inalienable right to do whatever he chose and that he was brandishing some righteous sword of freedom. I don’t think I’ve ever known such self-absorbed shite.
John, it would not surprise me if your name actually turned out to be Kenny because I cannot see why someone would be so committed to defending someone they don’t even know other than through his blog.
Like I said, I like/liked Kenny. In fact, we’ve exchanged a few emails and when he first started BBK.com he emailed me and asked me to contribute some articles. But before I had a chance to write anything I saw the blog becoming something that I didn’t want my name on. It was such an obvious slap at the Big Mango boys that I really didn’t want anything to do with it since I’m also friends with them.
But I did watch and wait hoping it would change. I left comments on some of his post without trying to get pulled into his battle with the Big Mango boys. I even emailed Kenny and told him that I found his negativity a major turnoff. He emailed me back and basically said that this was the approach he was taking and only time would tell if he made the right decision.
Knowing that I started reading his site less and less often. I stopped completely when he allowed Ronu to post about underage girls. I even commented on that post saying that US laws make it illegal to have sex with anyone under 18 regardless of the laws in the country in which the sex takes place. And Kenny’s response was basically that I should get over my puritanical thinking. That was too much for me so I bid him a farewell and never looked at his site again.
This is why I think Kenny is to blame for his own downfall. Even when friends (and I do know several other people who were supporters of his who also voiced concern about his approach on BBK.com) advise him to lose the hate mongering he goes full throttle ahead. Yes, it was his responsibility to tone it down because it was Kenny who was constantly throwing fuel on the fire.
Like I said, he could have easily written a very nice “Fuck You” opening post to his blog and been done with it. He could express himself, voice his frustration about being censored, call the Big Mango boys out for turning their backs on him, etc. But then it would be over. All he needed to say could have been said in one post. He didn’t need to shape the entire tone of his blog around bashing them. About trying to tear down their business.
You claim it wasn’t about that but I remember not too long ago he wrote the post about what a shithole the new Big Mango is compared to the one in Nana. He talked about how everything had taken a major nose-dive. Why? It was already obvious that he and the Mango boys were not friends so why trash their business months and months after starting the blog?
The bottom line is that Kenny was the architect of his own downfall. I think it’s sad. I would love to still be reading his posts today had he gone the route of not being so negative and focused on fucking over the Big Mango.
And now to address specifically some of your retaradedness:
Trust me, large and reputable American companies are EXTREMELY throrough in researching prospective hirees
I just did a google for my name and it returned 187,000 matches. Is an employer going to be that thorough as to look at all 187,000 pages looking for dirt on me? I highly doubt it.
Like I said before, all they Big Mango boys have to do is put up a bunch of references to their own name and over time all of the stuff Kenny put up about them will get buried in the noise.
the vast majority of his posts had nothing to do with the Mango boys and those that did avoided strong language and were mild.
This might be because you have limited reading comprehension skills. Even Kenny’s farewell post where he named all the Big Mango buys by their full names (first, middle, last) and then repeatedly called their business a brothel was typical Kenny passive-aggression. Of course he’s not saying anything bad, he’s just using their full names so that Google will index the site and anybody who searches for them by their full names will find Kenny’s site. Of course, he’s not saying anything bad but he uses the word brothel when the common usage of the word means an establishment specifically in business for the purposes of supplying sex and that sex can be had on the premises.
Now, let’s just contrast that with reality. I would be surprised if the total barfines at the Big Mango equaled a typical night out when I would stop in after work, have something to eat, and stay there through closing time chatting with some of the regulars.
Very few of the girls got barfined out of there. Those that did get barfined were barfined infrequently. It’s hardly a business built on a foundation of offering prostitution. Do some of the girls go with guys? Sure. Is the business based on that model? Hardly.
But Kenny’s a smart guy. He knows exactly what he’s doing when he uses their full names and calls their business a brothel. So when you say most of his posts weren’t negative about the Big Mango boys, just because you’re retarded doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t read between the lines. Of course we know what he’s doing. You’re the only one who seems deluded.
As for Kenny, the guy’s got tenure – he is invulnurable.
What you mean is that he won’t lose his job. His credibility is shit now. I don’t know about you but I’ve quit jobs rather than sacrifice my credibility.
And don’t forget, according to the Daily Post, he’s an associate professor. His career path can still be blocked. And believe me, if there’s even one feminist in the decision making process that determines whether he gets full professorship . . . he’s screwed.
and I seriously doubt his friends and family found anything surprising on the site.
Really? Why? Do you know his friends and family? This is why I suspect that you’re actually Kenny. You seem to know way too much about the guy that he never posted on the site.
And how do you know what the Big Mango boys did or didn’t do? Based on what Kenny says they did? Did he present any evidence? You seem way too convinced of the facts. Again, this is another reason I believe that you’re actually Kenny in disguise.
Anyways, whatever. It’s pretty obvious where your sympathies lie
My sympathies don’t lie anywhere. If the Big Mango boys did everything Kenny says they did, then that’s fucked up. Really fucked up. I’m not denying that.
What I’m saying is that in this particular poker game, Kenny didn’t seem to be aware of the stakes. He was like a gambler who keeps doubling up when he’s losing.
Remember, according to Kenny’s own words, the reason this whole thing happened is because the TFS2M site rejected one of his submissions and the owners of the site called him a perv. So he’s completely destroyed his reputation and his credibility just because someone called him a perv? Really?
He’s a 50 year old academic. He’s not some 18 year old boy hopped up on testosterone. He should have realized when the stakes were getting too high. When the benefits of bashing the Mango boys were eclipsed by what they could do to him. You know, like when they first informed his school that he was running a site that promotes prostitution. It should have dawned on him that if he kept pushing they were going to go even farther.
And if he was willing to risk all of that just because he got called a perv . . . that’s the dumbest thing I’ve seen anybody ever do in Thailand. And that says a lot.
Well, like I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight, and there are probably a lot of background details I don’t know, and probably don’t care about. All I know is what I saw on Kenny’s site and the Mango site, and I don’t feel you’ve given a good description of the flavor and contents of Kenny’s site. At all.
I’m not interested in getting into an exhaustive, point by point battle over this issue, but it has always fascinated me that mild-mannered Kenny is so disliked by the Thailand ex-pat community, even on the days when he posted on the Mango site and didn’t have his own site, he was always disliked on a gut level, and I think that says something about the Thai ex-pat community, that pretty much everyone, including you, dislike him.
I would almost use Kenny as a litmus test for what sort of ex-pat you are dealing with – if you like Kenny, you are one kind of guy with probably one set of attitudes towards Thai people and Thailand, if you hate him, you are another. It’s almost like the way you can tell a huge amount about a person and his attitude towards success and achievement by wether he is anti-American or not.
I’ll tell you partially why I seem to be more emotionally involved in this than would appear normal for someone who had no involvement in the affair. I came to Thailand a bright eyed young man and had tons of good experiences. I begin reading the blogs on Thailand and became poisoned by their bitter mentality and became bitter myself – it didn’t matter that nothing they said really matched my experience, that my interactions with Thai people were so much more positive, at the end of the day I was a newbie, things were confusing and uncertain and could be explained all sorts of ways, and the Old Guard spoke with authority. I began to hate Thai people and Thailand based on the supposedly wise and canny revelations of the Old Guard on what’s supposedly really behind the Thai smile and similar nonsense, and my happiness in Thailand turned to bile, based almost entirely on what I read. I know, I know, it’s my fault that I allowed myself to be so easily led, and that’s true, it is, but what can I say I was young and was looking for wisdom from the people who had been in country for longer, and I trusted what I read online more than what I actually experienced and my own judgement. I also personally know several people, young guys, who became bitter and hateful and poisoned about Thai people based on reading the Thai blogs, when their own experiences never matched what they read online.
It took me a while to regain my independence of judgement and realize that something is seriously wrong with the Thailand ex-pat community, and that they poison the country for countless people. This all may sound very silly, but I think it is far more serious than it might seem, and a huge portion of the Thai ex-pat comm is quite literally ruined by immersion in the Thai blog scene.
Kenny was something completely different – a guy who was not bitter and who had a positive take on things and tried to figure them out. I suddenly felt that my own relative success and fun living in Thailand and interacting with Thais was not a fluke but might be the norm for a normal person. I felt more sane, no longer such a standout in my attitude towards Thailand.
But at the end of the day Kenny was jumping into a pond populated by a particular kind of fish, and I don’t think he ever got over his amazement at what kind of fish he suddenly found himself amongst, but the fish certainly didn’t want him disturbing their pond.
And that’s cool. It’s all over now at any rate. The Thai ex-pat community is what it is and will never be anything different, and I understand and accept that now, and why it has to be that way, why Thailand draws these kinds of people, and why no one should challenge the world which these people have built for themselves, however fictional.
The Kenny crowd and the Mango, Stickman, whatever crowd really should not be mixing, that is the truth at the end of the day – the one will simply be amazed and the other will be infuriated. They are two separate mentalities that should not come together.
“I think that says something about the Thai ex-pat community, that pretty much everyone, including you, dislike him ”
…… John, with respect, read that back to yourself…….
How about this as an alternative:
“I think it says something about Kenny that pretty much everyone in the Thai ex-pat community, including you, dislike him”
The Thai allegedly believe in karma….
Though I have met few Thai whom I think really understand the concept of karma; I think I do…..
And at the end of it I believe in “instant” karma… “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”…. (Jeeezus! …sorry Confucious came up with that one 500BC)….I have found it works….It works really well….
As I tell every dilettante farang;…
Its the land of smiles but it works best if you smile yourself.
In the instant karma philosophy there are a few do’s and don’ts, the way I read Buddhism (I’m no Buddhist). You make bad karma if you commit acts for reasons of anger, vengeance, greed, neglect, aggression, avarice, jealousy, deceit, arrogance, wanton violence, covetness, exploitation, thoughtlessness & etc….
….sounds about right to me.
a number of those motives are weaved into the current discussion with more than one human culprit.
You guys…whoever involves themselves in this cat-fight…
Its got bad karma written all over it.
Leave it alone.
It will only infect you.
This whole present discussion does not enlighten anyone in any way. It leads to and ends nowhere.
It is btw disappointing to see somebody’s microcosmic personal squabble the subject of a discussion like BKKdiaries.
I guess I’ll have to post something myself soon to liven up the place.
In the mean-time ask yourself:
When was it that the darkest impulses of the human soul became virtues?
For me…. I prefer to expend my karma in the confounding search for a worldly, ambitious, curious, young Thai woman so beautiful she makes my eyes water… and who has to get my jokes…..Any of you guys know a lady like that?…Her number?….How much?
P.S. Thanks!…happy to get that anger bolt out into cyberspace.
I would also say he isnt invulnerable. I think there is a better than 50% chance Kenny loses his job. Did you read the student reviews he gets, it sounds like he is an awful teacher.
Doctorbond, I don’t worship the majority. In fact, I think the majority is usually wrong on most issues.
It’s nice that this subject can be discussed here. I’m surprised that the Mango guys have not yet commented on this on their site.
Kenny’s demise is a direct result of someome notifying the press. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.
John, what exactly did you see on the tfs2m site? I can’t remember the last time I read anything about Kenny there. Pretty much everything on Kenny’s site referenced them, though, right up to the interviews he gave to the newspapers and the radio station.
Segue Sam, how can you be surprised that they haven’t commented on it? They never comment on Kenny.
As for job invulnerability, that’s a pretty strong word for someone in so weak a position. What’s to stop CSUN from cutting Kenny loose? The union? His fellow professors are shunning him; not one has come to his defense. It’s hard to see them going to the mattresses for him. Suing in court? Good luck! Was there cause to terminate? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’d like to read some of Professor Ng’s articles into the record….
Or maybe it’s simpler than that. How big is California’s deficit now? Budgets are going to get cut; jobs too. Maybe a state university econ department will get downsized in the process.
The funny thing now, John, is that the only people who see the world remotely like Kenny are the expats in Bangkok. We’re his best, only friends now! We’re the only ones who “get” him. All of his friends and colleagues in the US are completely grossed out. They’re re-evaluating everything about him and how they interact with him in light of the fact that he even has a website like this. In the US, websites about foreigners going to Thailand for sex or “relationships” are down there with snuff, neo-Nazi, and Westboro Baptist Church websites. And if and when they read his articles, their opinion of him will not improve.
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Ohhh , I am rolling on the floor laughing in delight. How ironic, how amusing.
Just a few months ago, Kenny was confidently warning me on his website (in response to my article “on being a western woman in Thailand”), that “feminists like me will soon understand that their time has come and it’s over for them” or some kind of ignoramus bullshit. I guess not, Kenny!! So long, and hope the unemployment benefits are not enough for your plane ticket to Thailand.
“The owners of the Big Mango Bar were not outed, and could not possibly be outed. They voluntarily signed their names to business registration statements and shareholder agreements. In Thailand, these are public records”
Much to be said on this. “business registration statements” for Thai companies (presumably he is referring to the BOJ 1 signed by promoters of a Thai company) are public record, but the main shareholders do not need to sign this. Did the Big Mango Bar owners do this? If so, then yes, it was naive to do so. As for “shareholder agreements”, these are not public record and are not required for Thai companies (unless he’s referring to the list of shareholders, which is by no means an agreement but a simple list of who holds shares). Again, the owners do not need to list themselves as actual shareholders – intermediary offshore companies (or American based companies, if they are taking advantage of the Treaty of Amity) can be used and thus hide the ultimate shareholders’ identiy. I could go on and really bore the readers here, but suffice it to say, if the Big Mango owners exercised some caution, they could easily conceal their identities and interest in their bars. if they did so, then the only way they could be outed is through some other means than a search of the public records.
I recommend to all the non-Americans on this site who think that Kenny has a chance of losing his job to look up what “tenure” means, which Kenny has at his university. Jesus, and they say Americans are ignorant about other countries.
BKK blue, don’t worry, Kenny will have plenty of money to pursue his anti-feminist projects in Thailand!
Well it seems that Bangkok Diaries is now also part of the shitfest, rolling around in crap that is the BBK vs. Big Mango Bar feud.
I’ve read most drivel that has come online from most Bangkok mongers, TF2TM, Mango, all the other crappy blogs and there are really no one which can clame to be better than the other. Stickman was ok once though.
The Mango Boys, particularly their ‘wanna be’s’, writings had the knowledge of Thai women like a teenager, who just found a magazine of porn for the first time. Then there was the noted sodomist and his one liners, a few other goofballs living in a bubble between Nana and Cowboy.
Who cares about this little totally irrelevant group of people who ever seem to tire of kicking around the same tired bar girls night after night. I mean, who doesn’t get tired of hearing the same script delivered to them every night. Someone living in a world of grand delusion and narcissism.
I never really thought that BBK wrote anything interesting, but at least he described what REALLY happens in the mongering scene in Bangkok, where most other bloggers seemed to love passing themselves off as womanizers and players.
Again, who gives a crap?
I am sorry that BBK has now been subjected to the wrath of the feminist, pc crowd and hopes he pulls trough.
And I hope Bangkok Diaries will stay clear of random bar stool gossip.
It may not fit your stricter definitions of running a brothel, maybe call it a bawdy house.
However, the Mango owners are certainly guilty of living off the avails of prostitution, a crime in most western countries, the USAm and also Thailand.
Just because authorities may for whatever reasons turn a blind eye to it does not make it legal, even an acceptable business practice for a western expat, or morally correct.
I was in both of their bars and know this for a fact. They may have toned it down in the new Mango, but for a long time it was a major part of the business plan.
John claims: “As for Kenny, the guy’s got tenure – he is invulnurable.”
—
It would appear that, as usual, John turns out to be wrong, considering that the wheels to Kenny’s termination have been in motion over the past 2 years, and will come to a grinding halt early next year.
Buh Bye, to the Professor of Porn! Hello “early retirement” (without benefits)