Over the past few days, the BBC talked about Thailand, and so did two The White Lotus stars at the 77th Emmy Awards. The contrast couldn’t be any sharper.
It’s not just two institutions having starkly different opinions on the Land of Smiles. The social media jumped in and, suddenly, it has turned into one of the most remarkable standoffs between the conventional and modern types of public communication.
The BBC, representing traditional journalism specialising in investigating man’s darker sides, said in a documentary that Thailand’s “paradise” has come with a big moral cost. And not just that. The documentary, many viewers say, makes them feel that it’s unsafe to come to the country.
In Los Angeles, however, Walton Goggins and Parker Posey of The White Lotus, while presenting a major Emmy Award, shared heartfelt praises for Thailand’s beauty and delicious foods with a cheering and applauding Hollywood audience.
The social media heavily asserted themselves in both cases. The BBC was bombarded. Goggins and Posey were thanked for saying what they felt from the bottom of their hearts without an agenda.
If it had been overly-nationalistic Thais up against the BBC, the latter would not have to worry. Knee-jerk reactions to such serious claims were to be expected. To add to that, not many Thais are good at English. They wouldn’t bring knives to a gun fight with the BBC, so to speak.
The social media, as it turns out, are full of foreign defenders of Thailand, and they have brought nuclear to the gun battle. One western woman posted a clip showing how she joyfully wielded her mobile phone in Bangkok while surrounded by strangers, and kept it in her purse all the time in England. An Asian man, presumably a Japanese, uploaded another “unedited” clip showing him leaving his belongings unattended at a busy Thai shopping mall and coming back to retrieve them after a while.
Those are just a small percentage of video content fending off BBC claims. When it comes to written content, the amount is simply staggering.
Interestingly, comments refer to warm Thai hospitality along with beaches, mountains, temples and foods. Many call Thailand their second homes. Several expats say they feel safer taking dark shortcuts in Bangkok than walking through some alleys in western modern cities.
The BBC may have been motivated by that we-have-to-tell-ugly-truth syndrome, which is common among journalists everywhere. But a lot of people have questioned the timing, especially when Bangkok has topped a few global surveys on the “most popular” cities for the new generation.
In those surveys, Bangkok has surpassed the likes of London and Melbourne.
Time Out, influential in many places on earth when it comes to tourism-related businesses, events, media and recognitions, has named the Thai capital as the best city for the Gen Z. Bangkok shone in its latest international survey thanks to the “unbeatable combination of happiness, affordability and community” along with charming chaos and vibrancy.
Said Time Out: “This win signals a significant shift in what a generation values in a city. While previous generations may have prioritised career-centric stability or a quiet life in the suburbs, Gen Z – a cohort raised in a digital-first world of economic flux and side hustles – craves something different. They seek dynamic experiences, genuine community, work-life balance, and, crucially, the financial freedom to enjoy it all.”
This may or may not be the reason why the BBC documentary has backfired drastically, arguably more than when Apple had to practically apologise for suggesting that Thailand was a backwater, a country you could not do anything effectively without good, sophisticated gadgets.
In fact, the Apple and BBC controversies have a few things in common. The content creators wanted the credit but foreigners who believe they know Thailand better charged that what was projected featured either misunderstandings or blatant lies. Thais were dismayed but could do little until “saviors” emerged from all corners of the globe.
The biggest similarity of all is the social media uproar in Thailand’s favour. The outcry against the BBC has been so big that the Thai tourism authorities should in fact thank the British media corporation for helping inspire numerous clips and comments, all admiring Thailand and its people.
Time Out may be right about its “generational shift” remark, but a bigger shift is also keeping on materialising worldwide. There have been cases of social media clashing with the mainstream or legacy media, but the BBC controversy may have brought the latter’s declining influences into sharper focus.
Americans visiting China are bewildered by what they say are a good blend of order, economic progress and technological advancement, nothing like they ever knew through their media, and they are posting their own clips, which have gone viral. The same goes for people visiting Thailand.
So, the ongoing image war that has Thailand at its centre could be signaling a big global change.
That change concerns how we define things as good or bad, safe or dangerous, and dark or bright.
