Dodger, I see your point clearly and it makes a lotta sense. The BIB brown envelopes have kept the good times rolling. You are absolutely right! However societies do change (for better or worse) and I think now with Thai incomes are increasing (notwithstanding the COVID crisis anomaly for now) and more opportunities for boys and girls to be able to support their families in other occupations, we will see the society become more conservative and pull in on some of the raucous activities of the past.
Don't get me wrong, I too will mourn for the fun days gone by (!) but that doesn't mean we can be blind to the future as much as we would like to hold on to the past. My point is this -- together we can try to encourage the creation of a new scene which is fairer, less corrupt, less predatory yet still enjoyable. In some ways the apps have already done that (thank goodness they came along!) but I think there will be other, even cleverer, ways to remake the gay scene in the future. The writing's on the wall, guys.
And in some ways I think we have already done that. SP is more or less dead, as is Soi Mango Tree and the other pleasure palaces. We have moved instead to JC bars which have clearly now become the center of the gay scene in Pattaya. And JC is a far cry from the "over-exuberance" of SP, for example. So we are moving in a more sustainable direction I think.