What is your reason for using the forum?

[Lucas88]

Some people are of the view that HA is full of losers and nutjobs. Even certain old members log in once in a while to tell us this. It seems like at HA you can find just about every kind of misfit, crank and extremist as well as an assortment of colorful trolls and sockpuppet personalities. Some of the content that is posted here would be considered downright bizarre by the majority of the population. Yet here we all are posting regularly or returning every now and then to see what's going on in this zany region of cyberspace.

Before I joined HA in April 2022, I hadn't used any forum for a good few years. My thinking back then was that internet communities are a waste of time and energy and that it would be better to focus on real life. Before then, in the mid 2010s, I was part of a Spanish-language forum and posted there semi-regularly until I got bored of it around 2017. Even earlier, around 2009 to 2011, I frequented Chiebukuro 知恵袋, the Japanese version of Yahoo Answers, and used it to practice my written Japanese and reading comprehension. I posed as a Japanese person (just like how today I pose as a British Gentile as I type this message with a yarmulke on my head and a copy of the Zohar beside me ) and discussed topics such as the occult, conspiracy theories and hot ladies. But I was never as prolific on those platforms as I am on HA. For some reason, HA is on a completely different level of addictive.

Sometimes I ask myself what I'm even doing here. Isn't creating an internet identity and regularly spending a significant amount of time in cyberspace a waste of time? But then the answer came to me! I now realize that HA is a suitable substitute for social conversation while I'm still stuck here in the UK. The reason is simple. Most of the people whom I meet in my hometown are semi-civilized bumpkins who only know how to talk about mundane things like football, pub culture, reality TV and shopping. They are insufferably boring. Their conversations have no substance. Conversely, the diverse characters here at HA are much more interesting than the people of my hometown. Here on the forum I can have long-distance conversations with people who have far broader topics of conversation and far more interesting opinions and who provide a much greater level of intellectual stimulation or entertainment (yes, some of the more eccentric members are freakin' hilarious!). Sorry hometown, but the folks who dwell in you can't compete with the unique and colorful HA cast. With HA on my computer screen, I have no reason to socialize with anybody in my bumpkin town, except @Pixel--Dude and my bro.

Of course, if I were to go to Spain or Latin America tomorrow, I probably wouldn't log into HA for months. Those cultures are far more exciting and socially stimulating than anywhere in the Anglosphere and have some of the hottest ladies too and so I would have no reason to log in here or even read the content. I'd just be too engaged with real life. Unfortunately, right now I am stuck in the UK for reasons beyond my control as I've already mentioned. If one day I just completely disappear from HA for a significant period of time, it will mean that I've either gone to live in a Hispanic country or I've unexpectedly disincarnated from my mortal coil upon being brutally run over by a bus or some other heavy vehicle in motion or have been horrifically abducted by extraterrestrials or silenced by some Mossad goons.

My reason for participating at HA is primarily the more interesting conversation that it offers in comparison to the bumpkin population of my hometown.

I might also have some kind of psychological addiction to some of the bizarreness that goes on here. I think that even the more "normie" members who come on here to tell everybody how much of a madhouse this place is also have that same addiction to this place's kooky content. They make out that they're normal and that everybody else here are a bunch of loons but I think that there must be something deep in their psyche that resonates with the looniness and pulls them in. Otherwise, they wouldn't come back. Deep down, they undeniably love the looniness too!

So, what is your reason for being here on the forum?

Amidst all of the ideological extremisms and the crazy talk about exterminating people that's been going on lately, this thread is an opportunity for a nice light-hearted and humorous discussion!

[fschmidt]

I am banned everywhere else. When I moved to El Paso, I thought that the locals would be harmless and I would find intelligent people on the internet. Clearly this was a mistake. The internet is basically all scum, and the El Paso locals have roughly the same IQ as my dog. So I talk to my family and occasionally post here, and that is my social life.

I hope to move to central Pennsylvania where I can talk to Mennonites and maybe Muslims. In fact I am flying there tomorrow to visit. If I can move somewhere where not everyone is a moron, then I probably wouldn't have much need for this forum.

[Shemp]

I have no real-life friends (other than girlfriends but i have to limit conversation around them, especially more recent paid girlfriends who i have to be in best behavior around) and haven't had any for most of my life, and i early retired from the corporate world almost 40 years ago (i worked by myself a few years after thst) and i have never participated in real world group activities that involve talking (i do participate in social dancing). With such isolation from society, there is a danger of mental decay: megalomania and delusions of grandeur like @Tsar and @GeraldButler or becoming depressed like @Mercer and countless other self-proclaimed incels here over the years, or becoming a boring autist like OP and several other new members and thus unattractive to girls, or getting carried away by crazy ideas like @MarcosZeitolaand @PublicDuende who thought a great future was possible in the Phillipines, or becoming dimwitted in old age and thus unable to recognize con men (witness @gsjackson engaging seriously with PAG in another recent thread and taking QAnon seriously before that), or listening to mass media and falling prey to early onset senility like @Yohan, or losing all social calibration like @Cornfed and becoming known as the crazy guy no one wants to be associated with.

No one is there to protect me in my old age if i lose my wits. It took wits to accumulate my money and social privileges, it will take continued wits to preserve that money and those social privileges. Best way to preserve sharp wits is to engage in battles of wits with other minds, typically via conversation of some sort.

This isn't the only online forum i participate in as substitute for real life conversation. But most forums won't tolerate the bad behavior i engage i here, and it's probably healthy for my mind to allow my inner id to fully express itself somewhere.

[Kalinago]

if I had frequent access to prostitutes that are legal and frequently tested,like in europe and could pay for them I would have no reason to be here,except for boredom.

when I lived in amsterdam,I had a fun life.I could easily order nice food from thailand,india,italy,turkey,and even East Turkestan(so called 'xinjiang'),smoke weed and do psychedelics legally,f**k hot Slavic prostitutes from the balkans and the baltics,and be free from crime.

I was relatively happy,besides my dying mum,ocd and blepharochalasis issue which preoccuppied my life.now I have those problems with even more ones.

Hating my life circumstances,I have become very bitter and Radicalized.this forum allows free speech and interesting topics,unlike other forums and platforms,and is not as vapid and npc as looksmaxing forums and blackpill content in general(except for incels.is,which my internet provider has blocked).

[publicduende]

I have no real-life friends (other than girlfriends but i have to limit conversation around them, especially more recent paid girlfriends who i have to be in best behavior around) and haven't had any for most of my life, and i early retired from the corporate world almost 40 years ago (i worked by myself a few years after thst) and i have never participated in real world group activities that involve talking (i do participate in social dancing). With such isolation from society, there is a danger of mental decay: megalomania and delusions of grandeur like @Tsar and @GeraldButler or becoming depressed like @Mercer and countless other self-proclaimed incels here over the years, or becoming a boring autist like OP and several other new members and thus unattractive to girls, or getting carried away by crazy ideas like @MarcosZeitolaand @PublicDuende who thought a great future was possible in the Phillipines, or becoming dimwitted in old age and thus unable to recognize con men (witness @gsjackson engaging seriously with PAG in another recent thread and taking QAnon seriously before that), or listening to mass media and falling prey to early onset senility like @Yohan, or losing all social calibration like @Cornfed and becoming known as the crazy guy no one wants to be associated with.

No one is there to protect me in my old age if i lose my wits. It took wits to accumulate my money and social privileges, it will take continued wits to preserve that money and those social privileges. Best way to preserve sharp wits is to engage in battles of wits with other minds, typically via conversation of some sort.

This isn't the only online forum i participate in as substitute for real life conversation. But most forums won't tolerate the bad behavior i engage i here, and it's probably healthy for my mind to allow my inner id to fully express itself somewhere.

At our (read "greater than college") age, all human relationships are 99.99% functional. Friggin' nobody would even imagine engaging with you or me for the sake of killing time, or out of a genuine desire to improve their human bond with us.

I surely don't have to tell you: the moment you stop asking from the world, and you tell the world that you're done giving back, you have become socially invisible, for all intents and purposes.

It's what I have been doing in the Philippines for the past 5 years at least: I am not asking anybody any favours and I am not giving anybody, especially the local, any special attention: no "loans", no "mentoring" (which ends up in "loans"), no nothing. The only people I interact with are my wife and her immediate family (one auntie, one cousin and his wife and daughter), that's it.

If and when we want to engage in some non-totally trivial conversation, or we're just up for troll bashing, I think this forum has been serving us well, and for a number of years.

HA is for many, if not most, of us, a small window where our writings, no matter how useless, idiotic, inconsequential, controversial, can be read and (if lucky) replied by a small number of men with a similar mindset, similar desires and expectations. Maybe we want to exercise our English, our debating skills. Surely, though, most of us post here because they need to feel that someone somewhere, out there in the cyberspace, actually gives half sh*t about us, our stories, our predicaments.

Since you mentioned me, I think everyone has a story. Noone is asking you to listen to any of us, let alone believe us, let alone follow us. The reason why I wound up in the Philippines is deeply circumstantial, a knee-jerk reaction to a very tragic and unexpected event that fell on me back in 2011. HA was my escapist dream and it worked, for a while, until I realised that I was being way too naive with the fellow Pinoys and I needed to focus on making money, not doing charity for the country. Case in point, all of my developers are from Indonesia. Indonesians are on average a lot cheaper than the Filipinos, more disciplined and better learners. Again, distance has been key, distance has been gold.

[MrMan]

One reason I joined and started posting is that there seemed to be a lot of young men, (young at the time) finding their way in life, and I had years of experience living abroad, and had found and married a woman, to whom I am still married, and I thought I would share my knowledge and experience with others.

[publicduende]

One reason I joined and started posting is that there seemed to be a lot of young men, (young at the time) finding their way in life, and I had years of experience living abroad, and had found and married a woman, to whom I am still married, and I thought I would share my knowledge and experience with others.

@MrMan believe me, in this time and age being married and in love with the same woman for several decades is something worth talking about.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

@Lucas88

The same reason you are in this forum.
I am like a square block in a round hole, Black sheep, Social Outcast, the Dark shadow of society, a disillusioned cynic
in U.S mainstream society. However, I do way better with foreigners and Latinos. I get along better with foreigners instead of Americans and other Koreans. Just like you doing better with Latinos instead of your own people.

[MrMan]

I saw a bunch of people saying negative things on me here yesterday. Then today, the forum was cleaned up over some incident.

That's odd. Usually flame wars go on for weeks on this site. Is there a rule against personal attacks and trash-talking now?

[MrMan]

I saw a bunch of people saying negative things on me here yesterday. Then today, the forum was cleaned up over some incident.

That's odd. Usually flame wars go on for weeks on this site. Is there a rule against personal attacks and trash-talking now?

@Kangarunner had a little meltdown because he got diddled as a kid and you wrote about how there are young men here to influence or bond with or whatever and he sort of had a flashback from when he got diddled and accused you of being a pedo. Moderator removed it because Kangarunner also realized that shit was out line.

I didn't mention 'bonding' with young men online. I had no clue he'd accused me of that. I had just read stuff disagreeing with my religious beliefs, painting my beliefs wrongly, Mercer complaining about me thinking I'm blessed, or something like that, attributing ideas to me about God that I hadn't said and didn't believe. I'd just seen the normal negativity on this forum.

[MrMan]

I believe @Yohan had posted I wasn't a traditionalist because I married an Asian woman. (I'm White.)

I don't know what the definition of 'traditionalist' is nowadays in the manosphere. I'm kind of traditional, but Nazi or KKK. Americans mixed up a little-- the whites did-- in my part of the country. There was traditionally a taboo for whites marrying blacks, but otherwise, it was fair game, and those of English descent married those of Scottish, Dutch, German, or Irish descent in the Southeast. Maybe in the 1800's, marrying the Irish was a big deal. I didn't live back then, and the issue would have been religion. I don't know if there were any Roman Catholics in my part of the country.

I never heard anything negative about marrying Asians growing up, except my grandmother said Asian women were like Native Americans. They could be pretty when they were young, but she'd never seen a pretty old Asian woman. I thought I had never seen a pretty old white woman either. But my grandmother was a white woman, and seemed pretty old to me when I was a teen or young man when she said this, so I kept my mouth shut.

As far as traditional Christian beliefs on interracial marriage goes, before royals intermarried and became their own little race/inbred family, they married across racial bounds. A Russian monarch of Norse descent married the sister of the Emporer of Constantinople. That was probably a big racial leap for them. English married French. An ancestor of the Plantagenet dynasty, of Frankish descent I suppose, intermarried with an Armenian. I've got a tiny fraction of Anatolian DNA and I wonder if it came from that. He intermarried with the king of England's daughter.

The idea of not mixing races was a big deal in WWII. Darwinism might have played a role in that. In the US, a lot of it came from slavery and racial arguments to justify it. But that tradition is just a few centuries old.

[Outcast9428]

I've thought before as to why I use this forum. Especially given that I don't really plan to leave the country anymore. And the only answer I really have is that its just fun. And it helps me pass the time when I'm at work and there's nothing to do. My job is basically sitting at a desk, waiting to solve problems that the people out in the field contact me with. So there's a lot of moments where there's really nothing to do and I have to find a way to pass the time somehow.

[Yohan]

So, what is your reason for being here on the forum?

I knew about this forum since many years, read some comments, but did not sign up.
The main purpose of this forum was to introduce Western men to foreign women, to talk about foreign countries, to relocate -
Happier Abroad is stll a good name for this forum.

Forums are clearly declining on the internet, and I was mostly participating in 3 forums and all 3 closed down, do not exist any more.

So finally I was signing up here. I did not find any other forum which fits me better so far.

This forum is not an easy task either, it is serving somehow men, but men who have totally different opinions about how they arrange their life.
Not easy to make friends.

Moderation is not the best or even not existent, making it unfortunately a favorite place for trolls to post any kind of nonsense.

[Lucas88]

For me, it's probably the fact that I cannot express the opinions I express here in real life. My social standing, my job, my family, friends... the opinions I espouse here aren't opinions I can readily share with your average Tom, Dick and Harry down the street let alone people in a more professional setting. So it's nice having a place where I can just say whatever I want, whatever I truly feel, without the need for any filters whatsoever. That's rare to find nowadays, even on the internet.

I can relate to this. Here at HA I can discuss all kinds of un-PC and taboo topics and express my innermost feelings without any fear of being judged or banned. It seems that the community is already so desensitized to controversy and extreme or eccentric viewpoints that it would really take a lot to faze most members.

At the same time, this forum largely covers the topics that I'm most interested in and so I've always felt at home here. Not only does it cover expatriation, foreign cultures and exotic women but also conspiracy theories, the paranormal and other topics of a metaphysical nature since these also happen to be some of Winston's interests. Everything just comes together for me here.

I also appreciate the forum's free speech absolutism. That's rare in this day and age.