As you can imagine, we get a lot of comments on RTTP, and the fact is, we don’t publish them all.
It’s not that we’re drowning in a sea of comments, that would be a nice ‘problem’ to have.
The reason that comments don’t get published is that either, they add nothing to the conversation or have no relation to the article.
To most reasonable people, this makes complete sense but never a day goes by when I don’t get a nasty, hate-filled email from a visitor who’s angry that we didn’t publish his particular comment.
I say ‘his’ because it always seems to be men that take it as a personal insult that they didn’t get to have their voices heard on a mostly anonymous forum.
In 3 years of administrating RTTP, I’ve never had a single hate-filled email from a woman, so I guess that says something.
Let the Vitriol Flow
One such email arrived in my inbox last week in response to my recent article about how I never actually chose to live in the Philippines.
I’m guessing it must have struck quite a nerve with the author as he seems like he was apoplectic while writing his email.
I don’t want to give his warped view of life in the Philippines too much air-time, but here are just a few of the highlights (or should that be lowlights?)
- ignorant locals
- wild, uneducated kids
- too hot, most of the time
- don’t understand English (to my desired standard)
- women go to work while the men go to cockfights
And the list goes on, and on and on.
I didn’t waste too much time counting all his grievances, but I’d make a rough estimate that there was about 20-25.
Some of his claims I might not necessarily disagree with, but I would argue that most of them could be said about any country in the World.
It was interesting to me how he made mention of the idea that anybody who disagrees with him must be wearing ‘rose colored glasses.’
I’ve spoken about the various color of people’s glasses in another article, so I won’t write about it again here, other than to say that if my glasses are rose colored, then yours are brown colored.
The color of dog shit!
Why Won’t You Let Me Speak!
He’d used the contact form on RTTP rather than post a comment, but yet towards the end of the email, he ponders to himself whether his ‘comment’ will make it to the pages of our site.
Three reasons it won’t be making it onto the site buddy.
1. It’s not a comment.
2. It doesn’t comply with our, very reasonable, comment policy, and, most importantly
3. It’s just a long list of things you hate and find objectionable about living in the Philippines as a foreigner.
What I found almost laughable about reading his email was that he’d been coming here from the UK, since 1998 but apparently he hates it with a passion.
Now I don’t know about you, but if I hated something as much as he obviously does, then I certainly wouldn’t be doing it for almost 20 years!
Some (Not So) Friendly Advice
Here’s my advice to him and anybody else that hates it over here and feels so strongly that they are driven to sit down for 20 minutes and write an email to somebody that they’ve never met or conversed with, to make their feelings known.
DON’T KEEP COMING HERE!!!
Seems logical enough, right?
He has a Filipina wife so is that the reason he keeps coming back?
Is life in the UK so shitty that the guy is willing to suffer such terrible hardships, just to make his wife happy?
Having lived in the UK for the first 30 years of my life I can say that that country didn’t suit me, but I was never tempted to spend my evenings flailing my body with a bull whip just to exorcise the demons that were lurking inside.
Reading his email reminded me of something I saw when I was in Cagayan De Oro a few years ago, visiting a friend, and it just so happened to be Easter.
There was a religious procession that passed by his house, so I went outside to see what all the commotion was.
What I saw almost knocked me off my feet.
In the middle of the procession, there were about 20-30 men with their shirts off, and they were flailing themselves with whips.
You could see the blood flowing from their wounds, and it certainly didn’t look very pleasant.
It looked damn painful, to be honest.
You can read more about it by checking out this interesting article that I found on the Vice website.
Stop the Tangents and Get On With It!
Anyway, I digress – which is something I’m prone to do both in life and while writing.
We at RTTP enjoy and encourage reader interaction through comments. It says it right there on our comment policy page, so it must be true.
What we don’t welcome are lengthy diatribes that list all the things that the bitter individual doesn’t like about the Philippines or its people.
My advice to the guy that wrote the email is simple.
If you don’t like it here, then leave and never come back.
If you don’t agree with something that is written on this website, or any website for that matter, post a calm, well thought out comment, and let’s have a debate.
If you feel yourself slipping into a hate-filled tirade, then stop yourself quickly.
Don’t waste our time or yours because, guess what my friend, it will end up in the digital trash bin, where it belongs.
If all of the above fails and you still feel the need to vent your spleen then why not set up your own blog?
If you don’t have the technical knowledge to set up a website, there are plenty of tutorials that will show you how to do it.
If you can’t afford the hosting, then there are plenty of free hosting providers.
WordPress — which is the platform that RTTP and many other popular sites on the Internet use — have their own free blogging solution.
In short, there’s plenty of ways for you to get rid of your anger, but posting on this website won’t ever be one of them.
Conclusion
If you’ve posted a comment and it does not appear on RTTP, then the first thing you should do is to check the comment policy.
For the majority of comments that don’t get approved, not complying with our policy is by far the most common reason.
If you’re sure that you’ve followed the guidelines, then please use the contact form and drop us a quick message.
Once again, we love to get your feedback and welcome reasonable, thoughtful debate, so feel free to reply to this or any other post on the website.
Your feedback helps to make the site better so keep them coming.
You can quickly read the most recent comments and get involved in the conversation by visiting our recent comments page.
If you’re living in the Philippines and can help another reader out, then please feel free.
I’ve been here for over 12 years, but there’s plenty I don’t know about the islands.
No amount of time living here will make a person an ‘expert’ and anybody that claims otherwise is most likely lying or delusional.
Am I a fascist? You decide.
If not wanting to promote hate means being a fascist then color me Trump!
